has anybody done the heat-sealed synthetic DIY?

hey everyone -
just wondering if anybody has tried the heat-sealed (dome/boogiemama/etc) synthetic extensions on themselves/somebody else (all the boxbraid info, wrapping info stuff i've learned through this site has been really helpful btw)

just practicing on some spare hair and wondering how hard that little heat seal should be? super hard? boogiemama's pics make it look like a super hard bond, but when i practice i get just a kinda crispy outer plastic shell. easy enough to break by twisting though, as should i guess be the rule for easy removal?

just curious,
cheryl

that's what i figured, just curious about how hard the bonds are, etc

seeing as how it takes me about 10 minutes to do one boxbraid right in front of me...i think doing the back of my own head would take..oh..six months.

how often is the maintenance with the pinchbraids, by the way - every 2 months or so i guess? also, is the maintenance more about slippage or just moving it back closer to the hairline?

thanks!

thanks again, jenny - good helpful info as always. I did find someone through the hairpolice folks who is hairpolice trained and does pinchbraids in atlanta (i'm in northeast tn) who charges $60/hr if you byoh. sounds very reasonable to me. i'm thinking, other than my own weird curiosity experiments, that is what i will do eventually. i've been following all the posts and think that with my white girl hair and wanting to use synthetic, etc pinchbraids are the way to go. i know fina is trying dome style in atl too...can't wait to see her results!

Ummm...it's hard to describe online. They should be pretty solid, but not melted enough to affect the hair underneath (I practice on a cheap wig, so I can see in any melting occurs.) I haven't been trained in this, mind you, I'm just sort of figuring it out myself. What sort of heat tool are you using?

There's one variant of the Dome method that only requires one pair of hands- it's here: http://www.dezignaweb.com/mane/video.htm
Apparently those are excerpts from the Dome instruction video. Basically, you use a three-way braid with two bits of your own hair as two of the strands, then wrap the top half of the hair strand and seal it. I've found that I also need to knot the hair around the braid once to hold it.) I've been having pretty good results with this technique, but not actually put it on anyone yet, so who knows how it wears. Maybe Bridget will drop by this thread and share her wisdom. :)

-Rae

Rae,

Maybe I'm having a senior moment or something but I can't get visual on the link, just audio (and lots of cool whooshy colors.)
Am I doing something wrong?

You are probably just missing the required codec for playing back the video. According to AVIcodec, it is Intel Indeo R4.1, which I believe you can get at http://www.ligos.com/indeo.htm

HTH! :)