If only my client had known. If only I had got the call even an hour before, I could have sent … the jump squad.

As is typical in these cases, from the front, the nail looked radiant, beautiful and content. However, deep down inside something was wrong, Bertha’s left ring finger enhancement had gone terribly bad …
Sniffling at the end of the phone, Bertha replayed the story that had etched itself into her memory forever. “It … it just popped off, the selfish pinger” - after all the love and tenderness lavished upon it, left ring had turned into a jumper.

What caused it? Was he not happy with the plate I had prepared for him? Did he suddenly turn, or were the seeds of his demise planted long, long ago?

The Pinger

Affectionately referred to as a “Pinger”, this is a nail enhancement with such severe and sudden lifting, the entire enhancement kamikazes off of the nail leaving little trace that it had ever even existed.

One important point to note, is the frequency of occurrence with a pinger. Generally speaking, they will only rear their ugly heads within the first week of a full nail enhancement application (after a full set or a repair).
The real clue left behind: There is no damage to the natural nail after the “pinger” has punged.

What? No damage?

Normally it takes considerable force to remove an enhancement from the nail plate. In fact, seldom do the nail and the enhancement ever even separate.
Let’s say someone uses the bizarre “Tooth” removal method or the “Jaws o life” (aka nippers) to take off an enhancement. After removal, the nail plate itself is usually torn to shreds. If you look at the underside of the enhancement after it is ripped off… you can still see natural nail plate stuck to the underside. This means that even after all the effort and energy exerted on the enhancement, in the end the enhancement is still hanging on for dear life to the natural nail… In fact… it isn’t the enhancement that separates from the natural nail plate, but rather the natural nail plate actually separates from itself!

Could it be medication?

One common fallacy that we as nail technicians fall pray to is the ol’ medication myth. To be honest, there has never been a study that has been able to prove that taking medication of any kind will alter the structure of the nail plate enough, to cause products to no longer be attracted to it. In other words, Prozac is not going to cause your plates to turn from Keratin into Wheat Grass.
On that note… remember that if medication actually affects the nail, it does so in the matrix. The nail plate that we are working on will have been produced in the matrix approximately 6 weeks before we ever even prep it! That means that it would take at least 6 weeks after taking the medication before the enhancement product would begin to supposedly ‘act’ up.

The simple fact of the matter is that a Pinger is usually the result of insufficient preparation and/or severely damaged and weak nail plates

But my PREP rocks!

Sure you may have done a five star prep job, but if your clients plates contain far more oil and moisture than your average customer, your standard prep may still be insufficient.

Though for most clients a standard thorough clean prep procedure should be enough, if you are experiencing this situation on more than the odd occasion then you will need to re-evaluate your preparation procedures, and investigate what preparation boosters your distributor offers to maximise the cleanliness of the nail plate.

The natural nail plate is the foundation for your enhancement. The thinner and more damaged that it is, the more likely it will be that the client will experience service breakdown. This is why it is so important to practice preventative techniques that focus on protecting the natural nail instead of simply replacing it.

Don’t be bombarded with a barrage of Berthas kamikaze pingers. Protect and care for the natural nail plate and up your defences with a customised preparation routine for those manic jumpers.