How come you're not supposed to rebackcomb dreads?
updated by @kyle-adams: 02/14/15 11:05:12AM
Rebackcombing...
because doing it 1 times damaging enough doing it again does nothing but reset progress to day 1
if they fall out entirely at month 2 then u rebackcomb at month 4 they are al fallen out again but if you leave em alone they will dread back up on their own\if u rebackcomb u have no progress at all but double tripple quadrupal the damage every time
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My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1
soaring eagle said:
because doing it 1 times damaging enough doing it again does nothing but reset progress to day 1
if they fall out entirely at month 2 then u rebackcomb at month 4 they are al fallen out again but if you leave em alone they will dread back up on their own\if u rebackcomb u have no progress at all but double tripple quadrupal the damage every time
Haha understood. So if there are loose roots, I should just leave them and they're eventually dread by themselves right?
Baby locks should have some extremely loose roots. Usually between 1-3 inchs of straight hair. As they mature that shrinks. Mature locks have between 1/4 and 1 inch of loose hair there.
If it didn't lock by itself I'd have 5 inches of locked hair and 20 inches of straight hair. Eagle would have 5-6 inches of locked hair and 10 feet of straight hair. Roots lock and mat over time, on their own. The loose hair at your roots is what snags onto new growth. That's why you shouldn't mess with your roots. When people tighten their roots by pulling in loose hairs, they thin out their roots and make it so there is nothing for them to tangle with
Hahaha understood. Thank you.
I re-backcombed once a few days into it cause I split the dreads into way smaller ones so they'd mature quicker and get the chance to congo cause IMO you can definitely tell a congo'd dread from any other one. They look cooler to me. Plus I have little locks that are getting tighter really quick instead of having bigger ones that would be hard to pull apart later and would look loose.
And they hit it on the spot - you absolutely need at least an inch of loose hair at the roots, and it should never hurt when backcombing as well. Just don't leave too much in case oils from the wash pull the roots down an extra inch.
I just made sure to re-backcomb all of the dreads *very lightly* but making sure to get the tips since I skipped them. So an extra few days the dreads had a chance to tighten in the center and roots a little bit while I slept. Sure the tips get loose after like two washes, but that's how it should be and they dry faster. Now that the locks are thinner they're sticking together nicely and trying to congo :D And no they're not staying "tight," they keep loosening and tightening from washes/rinses - that's critical. But they're keeping their sections and getting minor loops and loose hairs within the core which is critical.
Important notes
When you do wash, make sure you get your scalp clean. Or the oils will run down the roots and not help things much. You can still have some water pressure on it, which shouldn't matter since the dreads will loosen and find their place quicker, and some loosening especially while clean would speed things up as opposed to having an oily scalp that soaks the dreads by the time you do your next wash, which would take extra effort to clean.
If some smaller chunks of hair separate from a bigger initial chunk/section , and the bigger one is still fairly knotted, you *could* re-backcomb them individually if you were gentle about it. In the first place. You don't have to, I'm sure SE would not agree. I would rather two loose yet different sized sections congo, than the smaller totally-loose hairs wrap around surrounding sections and hit the dread you want. Splitting a congo when it starts is easier. Otherwise you'll get early looping which is nice but I'd rather have the sections I chose /w the general size I want while still being in cooperative patches of hair and all mature at the same time and be smooth. Then when they mature, they can get loops from the congo action which IMO looks better to me, then of course get zig zags then smoothen back out again.
I'll have to post pics soon my dreads have changed dramatically in a little over a week. I'm quite pleased so far.
Hey. I don't mean to be a jerk....but cali is on his 3rd set of dreads in a year. Listen to SE!
there is no such thing as "lightly back combing!"
You wanna see how ugly and falling apart my one back combed...then re back combed dread is?
Rebackcombing pretty much sets your progress back to day 1. If it's just the ends you're worried about, don't mess with them. You want loose ends to help your hair dry faster. If the ends are blunted, it can take up to 24 hrs for your hair to dry or longer. Wispy tips help the water drain out the ends. The very best thing to do with your hair, from root to tips, is leave it alone. Wash it. Throw a bead or wrap on here and there. Get down with it's funkiness.
