Guess you found out the hard way those things are just glorified rags.

Wait, NO thinning shears at ALL?! That's wild to me (and honestly kind of impressive). I feel like half my toolkit would be useless if I tried that, but clearly she's figured out something the rest of us missed. It makes me wonder how many techniques we skip because we grab the easy tool instead of pushing our skill. I bet her point cutting game is insane to get that kind of texture without a single razor touch.

But what if it was more than stubbornness?

Three years climbing and I still say you should know your own gear well enough to spot that stuff yourself. Relying on strangers to catch your mistakes is a good way to end up in a bad spot.

Ordered a half-decent paint sprayer online and it came with a seal that was already cracked. Pretty sure compressed air from a hardware store did the same to my old vacuum's motor filter before I figured out it was cheaper to just get a proper dust extractor.