The difference between organic methods of locking and cultivated methods of locking really comes down to parting and actively encouraging your hair to lock. Cultivated locks will give you:

• Locks of similar shape and size
• Some control over how your new growth looks
• The ability to style your hair in ways similar to unlocked straight hair.

You would start your cultivated locks with a parted base. You can choose to part you hair in a grid, like staggered bricks or you can use your fingers to section the size. It is up to you. Just remember that the size of the part will affect the size of the lock.

Hand Cultivated methods

With hand cultivated methods your hair is coaxed into a coiled shape by either twisting with your fingers or rolling between the palms of your hands. As your hair sheds it become a part of the coil/roll. Your new growth is regularly twisted to keep the roots from growing together and joining.

As your shed hair accumulates the coils swell and thicken and intertwine to become a lock. As with other methods it is the accumulation of matted hair that causes your hair to lock up. Depending on how often you twist the new growth, your scalp will be visible between the locks.

It is important to remember that twisting doesn’t actually lock your hair. Twisting just helps your hair to lock in a uniform way. You don’t want to over twist your locks in an attempt to make them lock faster. This could actually cause them to thin or weaken. Time and patience is what forms locks. Twisting only keeps the uniform and out of each other’s way.

Tooled Methods

You can start and/or maintain your locks with a tool. The tool actually weaves your hair together from the end to the root. As your hair grows the new growth is woven to tighten it. The shed hair is caught up in the weave. It doesn’t have to tangle itself. Hair locks faster with this method than with any other. Almost all very small, micro thin locks are maintained using tools. Sisterlocks TM are the most notable of this group.

Back to Locks and Locking Page

Back to Natural Hair Care Guide Home Page

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

---