More Waxy Stuff

...yet I still dismiss it as totally nuts lol

 

following on from this.. risk assessment forms, adequate safety wear..

 

No one is wanting to ban you personally, just that I and other people have noticed how much drama is involved in the site and well, it's not something I enjoy being part of anymore and if drama continues... I don't like people arguing and I think that by deleting posts and warning people is completely fair. Opinions are opinions but attacking people for whatever reason is unjust.


Any way back on to subject, wax for me isn't something I'd use on my dreadlocks. I've used it on the advice of my "locktician" and found that it just clogged my hair. No one seems to be sure how much wax to use exactly and loads of lockticians slather it on making people believe that the more wax you use the better and they keep making people go back for un necessary redo's which can cost hundreds. Now I don't have wax in my hair, I feel like my hair is able to breathe.
I feel that wax is for MOST not ALL people who are impatient and want uniformed dreads for work purposes without going through the messy stage. If someone is dead set on using wax then that is entirely up to them I will suggest better ways but whatever. I fully support methods such as back combing and I'd back comb again I just wouldn't use wax. I also fully support crocheting dreads. I did it to my own to make my dreads thicker and my dreads haven't suffered in the slightest.

 

opinion = drama

nice

 

No not necessarily. People can have opinions and still respect people.

 

Hey, there's another wax thing I'm trying to figure out. In one of those 3 recent wax vids from DHHQ, he says something along the lines of, wax helps the hair get used to being in dreads. My initial reaction to that was omg what a load of crap...but I've been trying to think it through again.
You know how if you have your hair in plaits for a while, the hair holds its shape once the plaits are removed....perhaps the theory is that wax has a similar effect, creating bends in the hair. However...I'm sure any hair-bends would just be lost again when washed...With regular wax use could there be any cumulative effect on the shape of individual hairs, so they become "used to" being in a dread? I'm pretty sure it would still just be negated by the washing process...

I had similar thoughts about several of the attempts at wax-theory in those videos... often the train of thought or logic is not followed all the way through, whereas if it had been, it would have proved itself wrong. That's what happens most of the time when I try to figure out why wax would help; the very argument I use to try and prove wax could do good always ends up confirming why it logically shouldn't.

It's very possible I've just made no sense whatsoever. Once again, if anyone has managed to decipher amy-language, feel free to comment

 

BS yet again from DHHQ when I took out my 1st set of dreads, the first few weeks my hair was desperate to dread again. So I think that in terms of wax helping the hair to get used to dreads is BS. BTW Amy did you used to live in the UK. It's just irking me how you talk so well about ASDA in a different thread

 

Yes I'm English and have only been in Norway for 2 years; I lived in the U.K. before I moved here.

 

Wow! I thought you were full Norwegian

 

Damn...you must have thought my English was good! Now it'll just seem average, lol

Ikke sant!

 

I was wondering what language they speak in Norway and how you have flawless English.. Now it's clear, haha.

 

They speak Norwegian De snakker norsk. Jeg snakker dårlig norsk. (I speak bad Norwegian )

 

Oh ccoooooool.

 

I have a Norwegian keyboard...with these letters on it: ø æ å

 

Gonna link this as another side to the waxy story:

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=351573&f=209

Hey Merrivale, didn't you say you had something to add here?

 

yeah sorry just haven't got round to it yet it's in the pipeline! Promise

 

Wicked Hope this thread might get linked into one of the new stickies when Ozzy's doing the big re-organising session....

 

Ok, here's my imput. I'll start off by saying what I did if I can remember properly. I used dreadheadhq wax, for maybe a period of about 6 months, maybe a little more. I melted it into my hair with a hairdryer. As far as frequency goes I did it every other week like they said to begin with and then decreased that over time until I realised that I didn't actually need it and didn't like how it felt. That was maybe about 5 yrs ago now, and although I stopped using it, I never attempted to remove it with boiling water. I was however aware that there was probably wax deep inside my dreads, it didn't seem probable to me that it would all simply wash out. But there was no real problem at the time with that. Anyway like I said in one of my previous posts, after about four years since I'd stopped waxing I noticed they were smelling musty after washing. I cut several inches off and disected them. In some there was it had to be said no build up at all, no sign of anything, in others there was clear build up wax which was a sort of grey colour.

Up until recently I would have strongly denied that I overused it, now looking back I'm not so sure. Certainly as far as frequency I used it probably less than they said, but maybe I did use more than I should have, I'm a bit vague as to how much I used.

One thing I do think, because I melted it into my dreads I think it then becomes harder to remove than if you just apply it lightly to the outside of the hair. I know for a fact now that it obviously did not all come out between washings (maybe a sign of overuse?). Anyway after washing I always squeezed them out, first with my hands and then with a towel, I'm guessing that probably over the years just helped to bury the wax further into the dread.

Ridiculous as it sounds these wax sticks that knottyboy have introduced may actually be helpful in applying it in very small amounts. I do think that these two companies have been extremely evasive over the years about how much wax should be used. I note watching that knottyboy "how to" video, you never really see how much wax they apply over all of the dreads, although to be honest it looks like an awful lot to me.

I also think a lot of these problems with wax have occurred due to when people start of on dreads and use wax they are really excited about getting dreads which is understandable, don't really know to much about dreads and are extremely eager to see progress and overdoo it without realising it.

I did see a post on Knottylocks which seems quite relevent to this thread. I can't say that she didn't overdoo it or otherwise as I'm not a member there, and I don't know her. However if what she said is correct then, maybe that should be warning not to use it. I also don't know whether she melted it in. I'm gusessing she probably did. Anyway here's the link:

http://com3.runboard.com/bknottydreadlockforum.f8.t15953|offset=90

As for that dreadlocktruth experiment, it's a good idea, but I don't think they're going to see any major problems after just three months as long as they don't overwax. I don't remember anything getting stuck to my hair, dirt etc lint just because there was wax on them. I'm quite sure my dreads now have got plenty of bits of jumper, twigs, sand etc that's just got sucked in from the roots, I'm not going to loose sleep over that though.

From my experience I would never consider using wax personally again if I was to start out afresh, mainly though because it's not necessary, rather than because I eventually had a bad experience from it. I do think the anti-wax debates get more than a little out of hand though and I do believe it can be pulled of successfully if extreme care is used when applying it.

One last thing I assume that pro wax video was bought out in a response to jonsparrow's vid (knottylocks) anyway Jonnyclean I'm assuming you probably lurk here as well so "put your money where your mouth is" and lets hear your side of the story on here. We'll give you a fair hearing I promise.

Ok that's me done, sorry stupidly long post, but I wanted to put all of my thoughts/observations together...

 

Yay Merrivale
Re the blow-drying...I know they do that on the Knotty Boy instructional video, and it's somewhere in the Dread Head HQ instructions too...so it wasn't just you making a mistake, it's part of what they suggest as well!

Once you discovered there was still wax in your dreads, did you start making special efforts to remove it? Have you experienced any more musty smells etc?

 

Oh I know that once I stumbled upon that website I didn't really look anywhere else until sometime afterwards. My point was really that maybe it's safer not to blow-dry if you are going to use wax. I'd be interested to hear from those who use/used wax successfully how they apply it.

As to your other question, yes I did have numerous attempts to remove it with boiling water and a variety of ingredients: washing up liquid, bicarb, ACV, never really got any results though, I think it was just buried too deep. Oh well doesn't matter now...