Most, if not all barefooters take pride in their rough and calloused paws, though sometimes I find that mine still need a little maintenance once in a while. I've seen the PedEgg in stores and my initial thought was that there is no way a little "as seen on TV" trinket would work very well at all (especially having seen the horrible commercial on TV), that is until I stumbled across this discussion over at consumerist.com which begs to differ. I have a foot-file that I've used before, but unless I wanted to spend an hour sanding away at my heel, I would never really make any progress. I decided to drop $10 for the pedegg and, after using it a couple times, I am impressed at how well it actually works. It basically looks like a miniature cheese grater, which gently nips away at dead/frayed skin. It collects all the dead skin in a little cup which you can empty when you're done. This doesn't really invoke a plesant mental image, but you get past it soon enough. Once you're done with using the main part of the tool, there is a sanding-pad on the opposite side of the device, which you then smoothed everything out with (I found that using it in a circular motion did the trick). I had some trouble spots that I were able to eliminate. One was a the callouse on the ball of my right paw directly behind the big toe, where a crack was starting to form where the skin folds, and a scar closer to the toe that resulted from tearing the pad on a log in a forest. The pedegg was able to tackle both, where using the file alone never really worked. After using the Pedegg, my paws are no less tough than before. The only danger I could forsee is if you intentionally reamed on one spot for too long. :smash: Apologies for the long review, but in short, the PedEgg is a worthy purchase in my opinion. For general maintenence, you might want to check it out.
Thanks for the review, I too have some trouble spots and value a barefooters perspective much more than any shoddie. Good to hear your toughness remains. I have been hesitant to use anything other than sandpaper.
Don't know what possessed me to read this thread - but umm... @8.99 callous scraper at CVS works just fine. Buy some 'back up' blades too...
I've found that the Pedegg will take away toughness from my feet, especially if I use it for too long. It does work wonderfully for getting rid of those calluses and rough spots, though.
My mom has one of those Ped-Eggs and she absolutely loves it. I might have to get one of my own and try it out.
I might have to try one of these things. My heels can get pretty dry and then crack. That can be painful! I've found that a callous file works well at removing the dry skin, but they can be messy. Filing does keep the skin from cracking. The Pedegg thing sounds like maybe it helps control the "dust" a little better.
My sister had a pedegg, she says they don't work at all. As I recall, she actually returned it to Walmart, and they wouldn't take it back so she left it on their customer service desk with the receipt.
Well, in all reality, it's a $10 product, and I would not blame walmart for not wanting to return something like that. Would anyone seriously buy a used pedegg?
It reminds me of a file you used to remove excess bondo. Yes, the commercials were terrible. It does work well.
