When there's too much material on something and you want to take it off, it's almost always easiest with a larger amount of excess. It'll give you something to hold on to and tension to make a clean cut. You can reduce how much excess you need, such as by holding it with tweezers instead of your fingers, but it takes more effort.
So, if you need to remove something, be sure to do it as cleanly and closely to the ideal as you can the first time. Don't try to do it in stages, imagining that getting the bulk off will make the last step easier.
This isn't a perfectly hard rule, there's plenty of exceptions. The threshold for what you need depends on the material, tools, and context. Beyond that, excess becomes cumbersome rather than helpful, so you may want to remove that first, leaving just enough to make the last step easy. There's also cases where making small precision adjustments is actually easier than large ones, such as sanding away wood edges.
Better yet, see if you can avoid cutting things at all. Fold away excess paper, sew in loose threads. Tags attached on externally accessible seams can be removed fully rather than clipping them to the length of the seam.
There's often no better edge than none at all.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
I thought I had written about this before, but a few searches didn't turn anything up. Maybe it was a draft somewhere else? Oh well.
Spent most of my writing time on something else I want more time to clean up. I'm not sure polish is the right term for anything that makes it here, what with the time restriction.
Still, I'm happy with writing today.
- Rew