Tweezers not plucking out hairs anymore

Dilemma

After a while I find my tweezers lose their grip and it drives me insane! I’ll try and pluck an eyebrow hair out and the hair will just slide between the slates. Then you are left with two options: buy new tweezers or sharpen them. Some companies will do this for you, but I prefer doing it myself to get them perfect! Tweezerman offers this service, but only in the USA. Tweezers not plucking out hairs is a big problem.

volume tweezers not picking up — Beautiful contact area on these volume tweezers. Photo was taken with macro lens. Ideal now for picking up lash fans.

close up of lash fan — Good large contact area to pick fans of lashes with these tweezers!

Solution

At my beauty salon, I prepare all my tweezers ready. I grip tweezers onto a sheet of sandpaper and pull the tweezers overs the sandpaper, if you are doing this correctly the tweezers will leave a mark on the sandpaper. The first couple of strokes won’t be uniform and look patchy. Personally, I use 220 grit for sharpening my tweezers. After doing this 20 odd times or however many needed you will notice the mark left on sandpaper is more even. Hope this makes sense! Not the easiest to describe in words. I do this under my LED magnifier light. My mag light is 5 x zoom, so great for seeing the grip between the tweezers. If the tweezers aren’t gripping the hairs you will notice visible light between the two slates of the tweezers. The aim is to see no light between the slates or any imperfections. Keep checking under the mag light as you sharpen your tweezers every couple of strokes against the paper. Hopefully, the images below will clear up any confusion about what I am trying to explain!

If the tweezers are really awful I would start with roughest grit sandpaper and slowly work down the numbers. So 80 grit, 150 grit, finishing with 220 grit. You will file the metal perfect, but it can sometimes take a while!

tweezers grip — The photo was taken with a macro lens on my phone. You can see these aren’t great tweezers as the slates don’t evenly match up. However no visible light can be seen between the slates of tweezers. The gap is completely closed meaning they will grip the fine eyebrow hairs and remove them.

awful tweezers grip — No visible light can be seen between the two slates of the tweezers.

tweezers not pluck hairs — These are volume tweezers. This photo is taken with a macro lens on my phone. You can see the contact point isn’t at the end of the tweezers with these.

Sandpaper

40-80 grit – roughest

100-150 medium

180-220 – finest

Result

After lots of sanding of the tweezers, the result will be stress-free eyebrow shaping or eyelash extensions appointments! Where the tweezers grip the hair every time and remove it from the root or picking up those perfect volume eyelash extensions fans. Tweezers not plucking out the hairs can cause massive stress.