My Big Toenail Was Too Thick to Cut and Too Brittle to Survive the Cutting, So I Tested This "Wide-Jaw" Toenail Kit for Six Weeks and Kept Notes

The short version, if you're the skimming type: it didn't make the nail any thinner, but in six weeks of cutting it never cracked, not ONCE, and I can't say that about any other six weeks since 2019.

The long version is below, because the reason it didn't crack is the useful part, and it has less to do with the tools than with how I ended up using them.

The Nail in Question

I carried mail for thirty-four years in Erie, Pennsylvania. That's a lot of miles in the same boots, and somewhere in there my right big toenail decided to become a different kind of nail.

It's thick. Roughly twice the nail on the other foot. It's dull instead of pink, and it has a ridge down the middle that you can feel through a sock.

I'm not going to tell you why it's like that, because I don't know, and I'm not going to guess in print. A nail can go thick for a lot of reasons, and mine is between me and the man I see about it. What I can tell you is the part nobody warned me about.

It's thick. It's also brittle. Nobody told me those two things could be true at once.

You'd think a nail that thick would be strong. It is NOT. It cuts like a piece of old plastic. Squeeze the clipper and instead of a clean snip you get a crack, and the crack doesn't stay where you put it. It runs back toward the pink, or sideways into the corner. Then the corner catches on the sock, and you spend a week with a sore toe because you tried to trim it.

For about five years my method was to squeeze harder and hope. A bigger drugstore clipper and both hands. And a sort of wince, which I'll come back to.

I mention the wince because that's the whole problem in one word. The old clipper wasn't cutting the nail. It was breaking it, and I was just choosing where.

How I Tested It

I bought the kit in late February after Ray, who I play cards with on Thursdays, said something about "a clipper with a jaw on it" and then couldn't remember where he'd seen it. I found it myself. Thirty-five dollars, a zip case, three clippers and a handful of small tools.

Here's how I ran it, because a review where a man says "it's great" is worth nothing to you.

Six weeks. I cut every Sunday and every Wednesday, which is more often than any toenail needs and more often than I do now. I wanted to give it twelve chances to fail. Twelve sessions in all.

For the first three weeks I used the new kit on the right foot only, and my old clipper on the left, so I'd have something to compare against. After week three I gave that up, for reasons that will become clear.

I kept notes on an index card taped inside the bathroom cabinet. Date, which tool, whether it cracked, whether the sock caught the next morning. That's the entire science of it. I'm a retired mail carrier, not a laboratory.

What's in the Case

Three clippers, which sounds like two too many until you use them.

The big one is the reason to buy the kit. It's long, the handles are rubbery and textured, and the head is bent off at an angle so that when you're sitting in a chair with your foot on a stool, the cutting edge points at the nail instead of at the ceiling. There's a spring inside, so it opens itself back up after every cut. The jaw opens about 0.6 of an inch, wide enough that my whole nail edge fits inside it, and that width turned out to be a trap I'll explain in a minute.

The second is a nipper. Two pointed, slightly curved blades on a spring, like a very small pair of pruning shears. That's for corners, and for the thickest part right at the edge where the big clipper feels clumsy.

The third is a small clipper, black, with a curved blade and a little catcher underneath so the clippings don't go across the bathroom. That one's for the other nine toes, which are ordinary and had been getting the same abuse for no reason.

Then the small stuff under elastic loops: a double-sided file, coarse and fine, a flat scraper for hard skin, two slim picks for cleaning under the edge, and a thin lifter meant for a corner that's growing in, which I have not used and wouldn't without asking somebody who knows more than I do.

All the metal is stainless steel. The small black clipper rinses off under the tap, and I've done that every session with no rust so far.

The case says NailWise on the zip tag, which for once is a name that describes the thing, because the tools aren't the trick. The trick is going slower.

The Method That Stopped the Cracking

This is the section I'd have paid for. It came from Ray's sister, who worked in a salon for twenty years, and from my own index card, in about equal parts.

Sit where you can see it.
Chair, foot up on the bathroom stool, and the good light on, which I'd never bothered with. The bent head on the big clipper is what makes this possible. With the old straight clipper I was cutting half by feel, and you can't be careful about a thing you can't see.

Start at a corner, not the middle.
I'd always gone straight in at the center of the nail, the way you'd cut a fingernail. On a thick nail that puts the whole width under pressure at once, and the crack goes wherever it likes.

Now I start at the outside corner.

One small bite per cut, about the width of a dime's edge.
Here's the trap with the wide jaw. It opens wide enough to take the whole nail in one squeeze, and the second time I used it, I did exactly that, and it cracked exactly like the old one had. That was crack number two, and the last one. The width isn't there so you can take a big bite. It's there so the blade sits flat and square across a thick edge instead of skidding off it.

So: slide only the very tip of the free edge into the jaw. Two millimeters, maybe. Squeeze once, cleanly, all the way through. Don't chew at it. Move over a little and do it again.

Five small cuts, corner to corner, and the nail comes off in pieces the size of ordinary clippings instead of one big chunk that takes part of the nail with it.

Straight across, more or less. I don't dig down into the corners anymore, because that's where mine catches and gets sore, and cutting the corners short never once made that better.

Leave the white.
I used to cut to the pink because I thought I was buying myself more weeks between trims. What I was buying was a sore toe. Leave a thin white band. That's the margin that keeps a crack from having anywhere to run.

The file goes one way.
Coarse side to take down any point the clipper left, fine side to smooth the edge. One direction, toward the center, no sawing back and forth. Sawing a brittle nail is how you get the little splits that catch on the sock. Thirty seconds, and the edge is smooth enough to run a fingertip along, which on this toe is a new experience.

Rinse and zip.
The kit goes back in the case and the case goes under the sink. Total time, about six minutes, which is less than the old way took once you count the wincing.

What Changed, and What Didn't

Twelve sessions. Two cracks, both in week one, one from cutting dry and one from biting off too much, both my fault. None after that.

The left foot, on the old clipper, cracked in week two. That was the end of the comparison. I put the old clipper in the kitchen junk bin with the dead batteries and finished the test on both feet with the kit.

The sock hasn't caught since the middle of March. That's the thing I notice, day to day. Not the nail. The sock.

Now the other half of the ledger, because a review that only says nice things is an advertisement.

It didn't make the nail thinner. Nothing in a zip case is going to do that. The nail is what it is. What the kit changed is what's left after I cut it, which is a smooth edge instead of a broken one, and I've decided that's the whole job.

It also didn't make me faster. It made me SLOWER, on purpose. Now that the test is over I'm down to every two weeks, which is still more often than the old every-five-weeks-and-a-wince, because five small bites on a schedule are easier on the nail than one big one whenever the sock complains.

What I Didn't Like

The zipper on the case is stiff. Six weeks in, it's still stiff. You'll use two hands.

The nipper is very sharp, which is what you want and also a reason to keep it away from grandchildren and from your own thumb. It bit me once, week two, my fault again, but I'd want you to know.

The scraper for hard skin I haven't touched. It's in the case looking useful. Maybe in the summer.

And the small tools are small. If your hands are stiff, the two picks and the lifter are fiddly. The three clippers all have proper handles, so the important part is fine.

That's the list. I looked for more.

Ray

Ray borrowed the nipper in week four and didn't give it back for nine days.

When he did, he handed it over across the card table and said, "Get one of these for yourself, they're good," which is Ray forgetting whose it was, and also the best review the thing is ever going to get.

He bought his own the following week. He does the corner-first thing now. He's insufferable about it.

Verdict

My score, for what one retired mail carrier's score is worth: four and a half out of five. The half is the zipper.

Who it's for: anyone with one or two nails that have gone thick and cut like plastic, especially if you've been squeezing harder and hoping, and especially if bending down to see what you're doing has gotten harder than it used to be. The angled head and the long handles are the difference on that last one.

Who it's not for: if your toenails are ordinary and a drugstore clipper works, you don't need three of them. And if a nail is thick AND painful, or a corner is growing in, this is a trimming kit, not a treatment, and you want somebody who trims nails for a living before you want me.

The NailWise Thick Toenail Care Kit is the angled wide-jaw clipper, the nipper, the compact clipper with the catcher, the double-sided file, the scraper, the two picks and the lifter, all stainless steel with textured non-slip handles, in the zip case. Eight tools, one case.

It lives under my sink and comes out twice a month.

Right now it's $39.99, down from $79.98, which is under thirty-five dollars for the first clipper in five years that didn't break the nail I was trying to keep.

If that's your nail, and you're reading this on a phone with one foot tucked under you because you can't reach it, I'd get the kit and read the method section twice.

P.S. If you take nothing else from this: after the shower, corner first, one small bite at a time, leave the white, file one way. You could do most of that with the clipper you already own. You'll do it better with a head you can see and a jaw that sits flat.

P.P.S. The index card is still taped inside the cabinet. Ray wants to know what I'm going to do with it now that there's nothing to write in the crack column. Nothing. That's the point of it.