Hello Everyone,

I had my first cut-in today. Everything is great except for two things:

1) The density is a little too high. I know there was a thread about soaking the unit to lower the density. I cannot find it and wanted to see if anyone has any suggestions?

2) I have black hair but the unit is a little too dark right now. I understand the unit will fade a little so hopefully that will help.

Many thanks for your help.

Pete

I usually just wet the hair and pull them out a couple of hairs at a time no more cause than you risk tearing the base. I mean its basically do it at your own risk. If you pull it too hard or too many hairs at once you can tear it. The method I might try in the future is to use hair removal cream like nair and you carefuly make little dots on the underside of the base.. You gotta becareful tho. You don't use too much and wash the hair out from the top down i believe.. I could be wrong i haven't done it before. Maybe someone else who has done it can chime in with a more concise method

http://youtu.be/rPULkcyVD2Y

http://youtu.be/zTk3AKhH0Eg

The way I've always reduced density is to wet the piece, put conditioner in it and use tweezers to pluck the hair out. By wetting the hair and using conditioner this will cause the entire hair to slide out easily leaving no knots behind. By doing it this way you can see exactly where you need to reduce the density. You can remove a lot of hair this way in a short period of time because quite a few hairs slide out with each pluck because the hair is slippery from being wet and having conditioner in it.

Using tweezers will help grab and slide the hair much better than using your fingers. You do have to be careful with this method not to grab a "clump" of hair with the tweezers and start yanking the hair out because this will put stress on the base and could cause it to tear if you have a SFS system. Just wet and condition the hair and gently start sliding a few hairs out at a time.

Excellent, thanks everyone! I wish I would have noticed this durning the cut-in but at least I have the weekend to work it out.

Pete

The hair removal cream method would make me nervous because it doesn't look very precise and you're applying a chemical that eats away at the hair. The slightest mistake could possibly leave a bald spot if the cream comes in contact with a few too many hairs. The plucking method is the most fool proof way because you can monitor exactly how much hair is coming out because you're in control not a chemical. You can literally count the number of hairs you're plucking out. You can pluck out a few hairs at a time and check to see how you're doing as you go. Sometimes it only takes 20 or so hairs to make the difference. The only risk you run is tearing the base if you get too greedy trying to yank out too many hairs at once.

From my experience with the SFS systems from Toplace it's difficult to tear the lace unless you get real careless. As I mentioned the hair slides out pretty easily when wet and conditioned. Eventually I will give the hair removal cream method a try on one of my so called "guinea pig" systems. I recommend everyone keep their old systems that are no longer wearable as a test system so you can try things and if you make a mistake no harm. It's better to try something on an old beat up system than ruining a good one.

Use Nair's Shower Power 3 minutes for coarse and thick hair removal. This product is very effective. It will only act on the hair knots and not damage the base of the unit. Apply to the knots you want removed with a tooh pick, wait 3 minutes and rinse.

I've always had my mother use thinning shears. People say not to do that, but it takes the bulk out.

I find stock pieces way too dense.

I would not recommend using thinning shears to reduce the density of over dense systems. It will leave a lot of short stubby hairs in between long hairs that can feel almost like a mohawk near the base...been there and done it! Thinning shears are very good for tapering down the system to reduce some bulk around the ears and lower back of your head where the systems hair meets your own.

The entire hair needs to be removed if the hair is too thick. If you don't want to feel a bunch of stubby hairs near the base or see little short hairs sticking straight up amongst your longer hair don't go thinning shear happy through your hair you'll regret it.