The Grizzly Hand Shear

[Bernd]

As I mentioned last week (3-14-2026) I had purchased a Grizzly hand Shear.

https://www.grizzly.com/products/grizzly-12-hand-shear-machine/t26470

I ordered it on Saturday 14 and the little brown truck delivered to my door on the following Friday at 6:15PM. Not bad for a trip across the country with the prevailing weather conditions.

Grizzly at one time had a warehouse/store in Muncy, PA in 2015. I had purchased all my first metal tooling, a lathe, milling machine, and woodworking tools, table saw, band saw, planer and joiner at the Pa. store. Loved going to that store and look at all the machines on the showroom floor. Now they have two stores. Grizzly offers two public U.S. showrooms in Bellingham, WA, and Springfield, MO.

On to the critique of this machine. Oh, BTW, shipping was free, but had to pay a sales tax of $22.13.

I'm sure you've already gone to the website to look at the product, but I'll post a picture so you can see how I mounted it on a heavy metal stand.

 

Here's a close up of the shear. The red arrow points to the finger guard. The green arrows and lines make note of how large the opening is. Anything over .080" thick won't go under that guard. The blue arrow points to the bend in the stamped steel table where I'm contemplating of cutting off the finger guard. If you purchase one and feel it unsafe to do this then don't follow what I'm thinking of doing with it. I'll explain later as to my thinking of eliminating that guard. It also looks like it's bowed down, but it's not. It's the camera lens.



My first piece of non-ferrous metal being sheared.



The next set of pictures shows all the different material I cut and the quality of cut.

Brass .020" thick. Equates to 24 gage. The max you can shear on the shear is gage 17 mild metal. 17 gage being .0538" thick.



A piece of .0315" nickel silver.


And for Dave Emery the styrene cuts. First piece,.080" thick.



.040" thick.



.015" thick and a very narrow piece of the same thickness. It's a bit tapered due to not being able to line the sheet up parallel. Something I plan on correcting down the road.



This next one is hard to see. It's a piece of .010" thick clear styrene. I was surprised at how clean it cut.



A piece of single sided PC copper clad board .064" thick. I was surprised at how easy it sheared.



A piece of single sided PC copper clad board .030" thick. Again like a hot knife through butter.



I tested some wood also. First a piece of bass wood 1/16" thick.



And a piece of balsa 1/32" thick.



So that's my critique of the hand shear. After cutting all those different materials I wish I had purchased one of these tools earlier for building in brass and cutting PC board ties.

I hope this little critique helps if you're thinking of buying one. My experience is with the Grizzly shear only and I'm not receiving any compensation for my critique. I just find it another useful tool for model railroading. Questions? Ask away and I'll try to answer them.

Bernd

[deemery]

Thanks for the comprehensive test.  On the wood pieces, is there compression on the one edge of the wood?  It kinda looks that way in your photos, but I wasn't sure.  

The cuts in styrene are nice, that makes this tempting for me....  Mebbe I should subscribe for Grizzly's sales.  (I have 2 different Grizzly dust collectors, one a cyclone and the other an overhead finer filter unit.)

dave

[Bernd]

You're welcome Dave.

Here are two very close up's of the bass wood and balsa. You can decide for yourself of the quality.





Personal opinion. I think for the price of the tool it is well worth the money. Just buy one less of those fancy DCC locomotives and you can get this tool and make future work much easier for you.

Bernd

[deemery]

You're welcome Dave.

Here are two very close up's of the bass wood and balsa. You can decide for yourself of the quality.





Personal opinion. I think for the price of the tool it is well worth the money. Just buy one less of those fancy DCC locomotives and you can get this tool and make future work much easier for you.

Bernd

I'll watch for a sale...  If I got it for less, it would be worth it just for cutting styrene.

dave

[Bernd]

I'll watch for a sale...  If I got it for less, it would be worth it just for cutting styrene.

dave

Sounds good Dave. Good luck.

Bernd

[Bernd]

My server where I have my pictures stored on apparently is down as of 9:30PM. Hopefully they'll have it fixed by morning. I'll need to go back and reload all my pictures.
 
Bernd

[Bernd]

My server where I have my pictures stored on apparently is down as of 9:30PM. Hopefully they'll have it fixed by morning. I'll need to go back and reload all my pictures.
 
Bernd

Ok, fixed my post from last nights host server being down. I thought I had screwed up in posting and changed all my pictures manually to [url] when they should have stayed [img]. So all fixed.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Continuing on with the hand shear now that I've had a bit more time and playing around with it.

I removed the the guard that's suppose to keep your fingers from getting cut off. I really don't see how you can do that. Look back at the long piece of brass I'm cutting off. You need one hand to hold the handle and one to hold the piece of brass. No way are you going to get your finger cut off unless you are a Clutts and stick your finger under the blade. Kind of like looking down the barrel of a gun to watch the bullet come out. 




There is quite a large gap from the edge of the table to the blade. 1 11/16" inches to be exact. Those that work in metric can see the number 4.



This is the back stop. Another piece of useless appendage. Why? You'll see it in the next couple of pictures.



That is not an optical illusion. You can angle the back stop that much. I don't recall if the larger floor ones I saw at work could angle the back stop.



The stop is totally useless for under 1.25" material length. The stop butts up against the Blade Bow. Makes it a bit tough if you want to shear PC ties to prototype width.



I think I already have the solution for a new table and will be working on that between other Honey Do list projects. 

That's it for now.

Bernd

[Pennman]

Bernd,

Great presentation! n One question:  Does the cutting edge steel have to be replaced after cutting thick
 metallic sheets somewhere down the road?  Or is what I'm seeing at the back just part of a clamping surface?
Or, am I not understanding how this tool cuts? 

Rich

[Bernd]

Bernd,

Great presentation! n One question:  Does the cutting edge steel have to be replaced after cutting thick
 metallic sheets somewhere down the road?  Or is what I'm seeing at the back just part of a clamping surface?
Or, am I not understanding how this tool cuts? 

Rich

Rich,

Go back to the first two pictures. Those two shiny bars, the close up with one that has the tape in it, are hardened steel held in by screws. Once the cutting edge gets dull the face can be ground to put a sharp edge on it again. Kind of like sharping a knife. Cutting steel with ware the cut edge down faster versus softer metal such a brass or copper. The shear works on the same principle as a pair of scissors.

In the second picture the top blade will come down and shear that part of the tape sticking out. Just like cutting a piece of paper with scissors. The blades will also clamp the piece as it's being cut.

Also you are limited to the thickness of metal you can cut. Grizzly suggests the 17 gage (.053" thick) mild steel is the largest you can shear. The brass I sheared would come out to be 24 gage (.020" thick) Obviously styrene much larger can be cut. That one piece was .080" thick which would equate to around 13 gage, but due to it's softness can be cut. It just won't fit all the way to the right. You would need to place it more toward the center to get the sheet under the blade. 

Clear as mud? If not ask away.

Bernd