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So now youve got your dreads and your needing to maintain them, find out all abotu it here....
The first most important thing to say is that clean, dry dreads are 200x easier to maintain - so make sure you keep those locks squeeky clean! Also wax, bands and loc peppa will hugeley help the process and speed things up!
Palm Rolling (Tigtening The Body)
This is the most basic method of dreadlock maintainence and is the perfect way to take care of newly formed dreads which need the bodies tightening up.
Remember how when you were a kid you used to roll playdough round in your hands to make sausages? Well all that sausage making will now come in handy, so grab a dread and start rubbing it back and forther vigorously between the palms of your hands.
Keep doing this for a few minutes and you will start noticing the hair to get knattier and the body of the dread getting tighter.
Although you can happily do this without loc peppa, we can not emphasise enough how much easier loc peppa does make it.
Clockwise Rubbing (Tightening The Roots)
First of all its important to realise that even the most mature of dreads may still have around about a inch of loose hair at the roots, this is perfectly normal and it is unheard of to no one to have no loose hair at all! Your dreads will start to tightening themelves up on their own accord, but if you need them to look a little smarter and have some time on your hands heres how you do it....
Take you dreadlock and hold the body of the dread between your fore&index fingers, about a inch upwards of wear your loose hair begins at the root. Now continuing to hold the dreadlock securley, press down and start rubbing in a clockwise pattern.
After about 10minutes or so you should notice that your getting a big new fluffy bit of dread at the root, so to help hold this fresh dreadage in place grab a band or a small chunk or wax (of both) and whack it on there.
Finger Rubbing & Folding (Sorting The Tips)
The tips of your dreads are the last thing your want to worry about brining together when you start you dreads, you dont want to llock the tips up whilst the body of the dread is still loose because that will make tightening the body of your dread up a real pain. So make sure before putting time into chasing those perfect round tips that you have been working on getting the body of those dreadies to tighten up. We are not saying dreads should be mature before trying to sort the tips, but you should leave it at least a couple of weeks after the intial dreading before you start worrying to much about tips to much;-).
When your ready to sort your tips theres a couple of techniques that work quite well.
The first and easiest is finger rubbing, literally take the tip of your dread between you thumb and fore finger and roll it round, fiddle and play with it! When your watching TV, sitting idoly at your desk, or chilling out just sit there fiddlling with your tips and they will gradually begin to round off.
Another technique (which typically works better on dreads that are a few months old) is taking the loose hair and folding it over right before the hard part of your dread and then banding it down. If you have done this correctly the tip of your dreads will look round, feel hard and you will be able to see the hair under the band being held to the dread. Now wack a bit of wax on that tip and leave it alone! After a couple of weeks, with a bit of luck the band should fall away to reveal a rounded dread.
Sadly no matter how often you try to round your tips its incredibly unusual for them to hold on the first attempt, its a labour of l ove - but worth it in the end.
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