Best Tin Snips [Or Electric Shears] For Cutting Sheet Metal

• Off-Set – A pair of offset tin snips are much easier to use, you can visually see the difference between and of set and standard pair by the blade, and offset pair can cut around corners with less chance of jamming and getting stuck.
• Blade Joining Nut – The nut that holds the to blades together should have something in place to stop it loosening, but at the same time, lets you tighten it up as maintenance if you need to.

Best Tools For Cutting Metal

Straight Cut Tin Snips

Straight cut tin snips can cut through metal quickly and efficiently. They are especially useful at making straight cuts, and they don’t cause dimpling in the material being cut. The cuts you can achieve with straight cut tin snips are pretty smooth, making them excellent choices for finishing work.

Some straight cut tin snip blades are too long and bend out of place and then stop cutting. So keep in mind that a pair of straight-cut tins snips with a longer blade inst necessarily better, unless you are cutting something like thin tin or plastic. The pair above is a good-sized blade for a straight cut aviation cutter.

Corner Cut Tin Snips

Corner cut tin snips are better suited for shaping and corner work. Coppersmiths and custom metalworkers often use corner cut tin snips in conjunction with straight cut tin snips for precision work and cutting out intricate shapes in metal. But better known as a pair or left or right-handed tin snips. If the color of the tool is green this indicated a right-hand pair. And red indicates a pair for cutting corners to the left. You can still cut straight lines with either pair.

Seamers

Seamers are primarily intended for bending light gauge sheet metal. They can also be used to make cuts into sheet metal with the addition of a cutting blade. Keep in mind that you will lose a bit of functionality when using a seamer in this manner. Furthermore, you risk breaking the tool if it is bent beyond the normal limit. Seamers are best used for bending metal tabs in a tidy fashion, most used for making up flashing details.

Electric Sheet Metal Shears

Electric shears are a metal cutter that can come as dedicated tools or as drill bit attachments. They can cut through metal pretty quickly, and allow you to cut straight lines much more easily as compared to tin snips or nibblers. Electric shears like the Malco Turbo shears are also ideally suited for cutting roofing material hidden under ridges. Important to know that there are 2 different metal cutting attachments made by Malco, a standard pair for sheet metal cutting and a dedicated pair for cutting corrugated iron. Malco even does an attachment for cutting fiber cement sheets, if you are a builder you might not know about this and it could be a handy tool to have.

Hand Nibblers

Hand nibblers cut through metal effectively, but slowly, they only take a little bit of material off the workpiece with each punch. They can cut across roofing material pretty well for doing small detailed work in tight corners, making them useful tools for some roofing work. For tight corners and precise cuts, you might want to use a hand nibbler in conjunction with tin snips. Hand nibblers can also be used for sheet metal art, like copper art.

Electric Nibblers

Electric nibblers can cut through metal in the same way as a hand nibbler, but they are much more effective for roofing jobs as they are a power-driven tool. They do cost more, so you might want to hold off on buying one unless you have to do a lot of metal cutting work. Even with electric nibblers, it is necessary to finish up with tin snips for corners and detailed areas.

Here is my best nibbler review for cutting metal roofing.

Nibbler Drill Attachment

If you have an impact driver, you could get a nibbler attachment that expands its capabilities and allows you to use it to cut through metal sheets in a similar way that a nibbler does. Nibbler attachments are a good option as they are much cheaper and do the same job as a dedicated nibbler, however, they are good if you only have to do occasional and a small amount of metal cutting work. For trade use they are under-powered.

A nibbler drill attachment can pair well with an electric shear. You can use an electric shear to cut the bulk of the straight cuts, and then use this nibbler drill attachment to cut around steep corners.

Click to read my recommended nibbler drill attachment for ribbed metal roofing.

When To Best Use Tin Snips

Tin snips are the best options when you need a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to cut metal roofing materials, they are also very easy and safe to use and make an accurate cut with. For most roofing work, it would be best to have a straight-cutting pair of snips, as well as a left-handed or right-handed pair, depending on your preferences. Having these options will allow you to perform a wider variety of jobs, from straight to corner cuts.

Tin snips allow you to make precisely controlled cuts. These tools are ideally suited for cutting edges of corrugated iron that will be visible after the project is completed.

Other tasks that tin snips can handle effectively are cutting galvanized steel and plastic flashings. They are also useful for cutting stainless steel–if the material is thin enough–and for intricate copper work. Tin snips cut copper like butter as copper is soft this makes them ideal for shaping copper artwork as well.

When Not To Use Tin Snips

Tin snips probably aren’t the ideal choices when you need to cut excessively thick material. Trying to cut material that is thicker than the snips are capable of will likely cause the blades to separate, resulting in rough or uneven cuts. You could experience similar issues with tin snips that have excessively long blades.

Cheaper tin snips can give you even more trouble, due to weak blades that tend to bend outwards and not cut into the material at all. Most tin snips–particularly those of the cheaper variety–will suffer from this problem eventually, so it is always better to pay a little more money for a robust model that will give you longer service.

Although you could use tin snips to cut through fairly thin corrugated metal roofing, the work is often slow and difficult. Depending on how thick the material is, you might be better off using a hand nibbler or electric shears.

Metal Cutting Jobs For Tin Snips

Tin snips are best suited for metalworkers and DIY’ers that want to make accurate cuts. Even though snips are relatively cheap tools, they can make clean and precisely-controlled cuts that even costlier devices would have difficulty doing.

One of the best uses of tin snips is to clean up edges that you first cut with a nibbler. For example, you can quickly cut roofing material to about half an inch longer than the intended length or width. After installing the roof, you can then trim the excess with a good pair of tin snips if it is a visible and seen cut edge.

Tin snips are also useful for cutting large pieces of sheet metal. For this purpose, however, you should make sure that the sheet is large enough so that you can twist the off-cut away and keep the snips on a straight path with-out the blade jamming.

Best Electric Metal Cutting Shears

Shears are useful tools for making straight cuts into sheet metal. They are often presented as a more efficient alternative to nibblers or tin snips, enabling users to cut through corrugated metal with minimal effort. Electric shears give you the ability to cut through sheet metal materials with ease.

There are dedicated electric shearing power tools like the cordless Milwaukee, but you could also purchase a shearing attachment for your impact driver instead, as a more cost-effective option. Check out the Malco TSHD Turboshear that could take the place of most nibblers or tin sniping jobs when it comes to cutting corrugated iron.