Upright manual shears

Abstract

Cutting shears having a pair of handles pivotally connected as levers to a lower pivot and pivotally connected in a compound linkage arrangement to a pair of intersecting cutting blades at an upper pivot. A hand grip on each of the handles includes an outwardly projecting upper hand grip tab and the distance from the upper pivot to a hand contacting surface of each upper hand grip tab is substantially in the range from 2½″ to 3¼″ and preferably substantially 2¾″. The distance from the locus of intersections of the blades as they pivot through a cutting motion to the plane of the most distal tips of the handles is substantially within range from 6¾″ to 7¼″ and preferably 7″. The hand grips are substantially identically, arcuately, outwardly, oppositely contoured and longitudinally symmetrical. Each hand grip also has an outwardly projecting lower hand grip tab and the hand contacting surfaces of the upper and lower tabs on each hand grip are spaced apart a distance substantially 4½″ although they may be substantially within the range of 4¼″ to 4¾″. The tabs protrude outwardly from an intermediate portion of the hand grips preferably by ½″.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.