#Problems
Most complaints about manicure instruments describe a symptom, not a cause. A nail that splits at the corner was crushed rather than cut. A hangnail that appears the next day started as a fold you never saw. Rust at the joint began as water left after washing. This section names the failures and traces each one back to what produced it — blunt edges, blades that no longer meet, a pivot set too loose or too tight, the wrong instrument for the job. Almost all of them are diagnosable in five seconds with the window test: hold the closed blades up to the light, and any visible line of daylight means the instrument crushes instead of cutting.
A strip of skin, not nail, that has torn away beside the nail. Cut it flush — pulling it takes living tissue with it.
A nail edge pressing into the skin fold beside it. Most often started by cutting the corner down — and made worse by cutting it again.
Skin that has grown forward and attached to the nail plate itself. Not the same as an overgrown cuticle, and not something to scrape away by force.