I was having all the problems described until I did my 121 with Kate from CND in Cheltenham.
I was relieved to find that it also takes her 1.5-shrs to do a french rebalance. I find it takes me near enough the same amount of time to do a full set.
In aswer to some of your qs, if I'm using opaque I clip then sculpt back on, but if I've used clear/sheer on zones 2 and 3, then it's the old fashioned way. Kate showed me a really fool proof method of rebalancing P+W, which I'll try my best to descrive here:
1. File the sidewalls as normal, the same as when finishing (they always seem to grow out a bit wonky.)
2. Take the length down to the original length.
3. File the 'forward' side of the nail.= with a 180 grit (as when finishing). Do the same on the 'reverse' side. Look down the barrel. You should be nearly back down to the unblended tip thickness in zone 1. The apex should be practically untouched at this point.
4.File zone 1 at the 'centre' iykwim. Should only take a few swipes of the file downwards (I do this with 100 grit as my nails are built up thicker here anyway) Look down the barrel. The whole of zone 1 should now be the thickness of an unblended tip.
5. At this point the sidewalls and zone 1 should be nice and thin. Now file the apex and reduce it by about half.
6.Use a kanga board to file away lifting in zone 3, otherwise leave it alone if it's flush to the natural nail.
This method leaves the 'spine' running down the centre of the nail (with the exception of zone 1 which is what step 4 is about). This means you are not spending loads of time filing huge amounts of product away, the 'skeleton' of the nail is left. Ideally, you will leave some white behind but probably not all of it, but that's ok as you're adding more white anyway.
I was shocked by how tiny the beads were to replace product during a rebalance. Even when some of the white had been filed away, Kate was picking up white beads the size of little dots and they were camouflaging the old smile perfectly.
I think this is also true when creating new sets though, it's much quicker to keep them thin. if someone needs them thicker for any reason then i'll usually rebalance using reverse with forms.
Hth, and feel free to msg me if this does't make sense!
