Heat vision?
Ax.
I used to know a missionary who did work in the Amazon for many years. As far as he was concerned, Europeans only needed Swiss army knives because they didn’t have piranha teeth. One of the uses he mentioned was for trimming nails.
I’m with you there. Not to mention the toe nails seem to have gotten harder with age and take more effort to chomp through.
I must confess rather than trying to get others to chew them for me I resort to the Chronos method a fair bit.
I’m still not getting into your bed.
Just chiming in to let everyone know that after reading this thread, I think I’m gonna puke now.
:khack:
Yeah, as someone who keeps his toe nails and fingernails neatly trimmed all the time, I have to second this. It takes about 2 minutes every couple of weeks to stay on top of this. Jesus.
I think the rigidity and striation of finger/toe nails must vastly range over humanity.
My wife and daughter can both bite and tear their fingernails cleanly off, just above the quick.
I’ve attempted this at various points in my life, and you may as well ask me to cut my arm off with a Leatherman.
I don’t think I’ve ever used clippers in my life (and the sound might be the most awful sound invented by humans, too). I just use my fingernails. I almost never have a problem with it ripping too far down.
Just wanted to toss in that what cured me of (finger) nail biting was when I chipped a tooth doing it. Happened around age 50 - so maybe my teeth had weakened and my nails toughened with age. Getting the tooth fixed proved it to be way too expensive of a habit to continue. I had thought teeth tough enough to handle it, but my dentist said my experience was not at all uncommon.
A sharp pocket knife does a really nice job trimming nails. Especially if you aren’t trying to cut them really short. You don’t want to slice the end of your finger off. 
I’ve trimmed mine many times with my pocket knife.
I’m with you on this. This thread kind of blows my mind. . . I mean, I knew my finger and toe nails were somewhat tougher than average, but I didn’t realize to what extent. Chewing them off? It’d take all day! Using my other fingernails? Not even remotely possible, and I never would have realized it was possible for anyone. A knife? The force required would make it very dangerous to do that anywhere near exposed skin. I use toenail clippers for my fingernails because regular nail clippers don’t have the leverage. I can only trim my toenails after a long shower or otherwise soaking them.
And 2 minutes every couple of weeks!?! Holy crap. . . People really only have to trim their nails every couple of weeks? I play finger-style guitar, so I keep my nails short on the left hand and slightly longer (but not long) on the right. I have to trim my nails every other **day **in order to keep them short enough to play. I can get by with maybe 3 or 4 days for the right hand.
I always thought my nails were average too, but I cannot imagine tearing them. I think the nail’s cohesive strength is greater than its attachment to my finger, if you know what I mean. I tried biting them once, to see why people liked it so much, but it left a horrible jagged edge.
Now thinking of ways to measure nail hardness…
Actually, OP is important to paleo-anthropologists, who study teeth hardness as well as nail strength to figure out feeding strategies.
As to the AaronX cite here, measuring hardness is old hat: the Mohs scale is a common metric. Plus a bunch of others, including indentation scales, if you follow the Wiki links (not just the ones under Mohs). Floating around the net (once on a page on whether a cat can scratch the screen of an iphone) is that animal keratin is under 3 Mohs, to glass at 6ish, and diamond at 10 and talc at 1. No cites anywhere.
Indentation (non-destructive) scales are handy for in-vivo measurement of nail strength. Can be Googled.
Correct data is undoubtedly here, which I can’t get to, but it has a long visible bib sure to satisfy:
Nanotechnology in Nail Care
Doug Schoon
Nanotechnology in Dermatology
2013, pp 19-30
Earlier work:
Indentation Hardness of the Fingernail
Sanford B Newman and Richard W Young
The Journal of Investigative Dermatology (1967) 49, 103–105; doi:10.1038/jid.1967.110
Strength of Fingernails
Richard W Young, Sanford B Newman and Russell J Capott
he Journal of Investigative Dermatology (1965) 44, 358–360; doi:10.1038/jid.1965.64.
And, for all,
Nail-splitting: a survey.
(PMID:6074108)
Dixon S
Nursing Times [1967, 63(52):1760-1761]
In fooling around Googling this little bib cite project, I found an article that surely would be perfectly in the spirit of GQ, down to the clarity of the title query:
Nail growth direction revisited. Why do nails grow out instead of up?
Baran R.
J Am Acad Dermatol. 1981 Jan;4(1):78-84.
Abstract
In some investigations Kligman has been thought to have shown that the cul-de-sac in which the nail is formed determines that it should grow outward instead of upward. However, results obtained during the course of nail surgery for chronic paronychia and electron microscopic studies, along with genetic evidence, fail to confirm his observation on the effect of the proximal nail fold on nail growth direction. The whole subject of direction of nail growth remains questionable and worthy of further consideration.
In fact, I would like to see Cecil take this query to the woodshed.
I’m a nail tearer. I’d probably bite them, but my teeth don’t meet in the front (open bite), so I can’t do that. Generally, I do a pretty good job with it, as I’ve learned exactly where to make the notch with my other nail. Tearing toenails is very easy, except for the big toe…sometimes I need clippers for that, as it’s harder than my thumbnail, so I can’t always get a good notch. My toenails almost always come off right where I’d clip them, without even looking. In fact, with my big toe, I will sometimes get small scissors and start the notch, then continue tearing, simply because I get a more uniform and even toenail, since even toenail clippers have way to aggressive a curve for the big toe, so if I use clippers, I end up with scalloped big toe.
My fingernails are less predictable, but I still mostly do fine. Sometimes, I’ll create a hangnail by doing this, and sometimes the tear will go too deep to the quick, but normally I can redirect the tear to prevent it from doing damage. On the rare occasion that it tears WAY too deep (where if I continue, there will be ripping of fresh skin), I will stop, go find clippers and clip off the already torn part, then file the sharp notch down so it doesn’t snag. Then I’ll wait a day or two until the nail grows out further so I can properly trim it (then I’ll use clippers to get the rest to reestablish a straight nail edge). That only happens maybe once or twice a year, though. Like my big toe, trimming my thumbnail with clippers usually makes a mess of the nail. I have brachydactyly type D on both thumbs, so my thumbnail bed is extremely short and broad, so any dipping or scalloping from a typical nail clipper makes them look even more odd than they already do.
I’ve successfully trimmed nails with both scissors and a pocket knife. Mine are too thick and hard to bite down, or tear without it going to the quick.
People in rural Cameroon used a piece of volcanic rock, which were brought up from the coast and available at any market. These were also useful for removing callouses and dead skin.
I’m familiar with indentation hardness testing. But doesn’t it need a pretty smooth, flat and level surface? And most scales, eg Vickers, are designed for much harder materials than nails. And I’d like a method others can use as well, so we can compare.
A regular nail clipper doesn’t open wide enough to cut my thick, nasty, old toenails. I figured a Dremel tool with a grinding stone bit would work well to grind down the growth so that my socks wouldn’t snag and my wife’s legs wouldn’t bleed if I happened to snag her. Turns out that it worked very well. I imagine that I’m not the first person to do that.
Sorry for reviving a zombie thread.
A Dremel tool might work well, but I doubt that that was the method used before clippers were invented.
In any event, welcome!