Watch the Knotty Boy How to Make Dreadlocks Instructional Video,
or continue reading for the same info!

 

Welcome to the first video in our series on How to Make, Maintain and Remove Dreadlocks - the Knotty Boy Method. This How to Make Dreadlocks Step-by-Step video is now also available on DVD, offering the convenience of being able to view this video in better quality from any DVD player, including DVD-only hilarious outtakes of our Knotty Boy stylists that make it worth every penny.
Or, simply enjoy this free version of How to Make Dreadlocks Step-by-Step with our compliments for your viewing and learning pleasure!
 
REPEAT: This video shows ONLY the Knotty Boy officially recommended Loctician-Approved-Since-1998-in-Any-Hair-Type Method for Starting Dreadlocks. Thousands of people around the world attest to the short-and-long term locking success of using Knotty Boy Dread Wax in our Knotty Boy Dreadlock Gallery. However, you do not need to use recommended Knotty Boy products for this locking method to be successful. Going product-free will just require much more time for your hair to form into true locks. If you choose not to use product, skip over the product-use instructions to learn how to create product-free locks!

 

Stuff You'll Need to Start Dreadlocks

• Three inches of hair or longer to start dreadlocks using Knotty Boy Dread Wax. (For people attempting to start locks without it, you will need hair at least 6 inches or longer and a lot of luck and patience for the next few years. See the Knotty Boy Dread Wax page for more about that.)
   
• A good, patient friend or two or five to help you start your locks. You CAN start them yourself, but having help makes the job go much faster and easier.
   
• A jar o' Knotty Boy Dread Wax or one/two of our Knotty Boy Dread Wax Roll-Up Sticks, depending on how much hair you gots to lock.
   
• No Wax? No sweat! Wax can help with the uniform formation and overall success of your new locks, but they will eventually form without the use of any product as well. If you are looking for a great wax-alternative, the hugely popular Knotty Boy LockSteady Tropical Tightening Gel is a light, wash-out, all natural lock-accelerating formula that also works wonders.

• A strong comb with closely-spaced teeth. The best are our Knotty Boy Professional Locking Combs, but a good strong plastic comb or a pet flea-comb (NOT used on your pet, dum-dum.) will work pretty well, too.
  
• Old towel to wipe goopy hands on.
   
• Hair claws, clips or elastics to keep the other sections of hair out of the way.
   
• All the Bob Marley records you can find or borrow to play during the first hours of your Dreadlock Holiday. (May we recommend a Knotty favorite, Catch a Fire, for this most important event?)
   
• A camera for taking your Before and After pictures to send us for a coveted place in the famous Knotty Boy Happy Nappy Dreadlock Gallery.
   
• And time, patient time for the starting of your locks!
   

Some Additional Notes

• For people with hair that has little to no texture (ie. bone-straight ), the night before locking up we highly recommend stripping all oils and dirt from your hair with either the Knotty Boy Dread Shampoo Bar or the FREE Knotty Boy Bee Washed Pre-Dreading and De-Waxing Soap found in every Knotty Boy Dreadlock Starter Kit (with the exception of the Simple Starter Kit). No conditioners! Then towel dry very well and braid the hair slightly damp into a few tight braids. Sleep with braids in overnight, then the next day before you begin dreading, take out the braids and brush/blow dry the hair to make it as dry and frizzy as possible. This will help the locks take to your hair much better. Tip! You can also use an '80's style crimper on dry, washed hair to achieve the same effect when time is an issue.
   
• For all other hair types, to strip the hair of all oils and dirt we recommend washing with either the Knotty Boy Dread Shampoo Bar or the FREE Knotty Boy Bee Washed Pre-Dreading and De-Waxing Soap found in every Knotty Boy Dreadlock Starter Kit (with the exception of the Simple Starter Kit). No conditioners! Then blow dry/let dry overnight, brush the hair out to make it as frizzy as possible and get locking!

 

How to Make Dreadlocks: Step By Step Instructions

Step 1 - Music & Before Pic

Put on the Bob Marley record of your choice. If it's Catch a Fire, you and your friends may take the next three minutes to put on your flashdance ass-pants and shake your bootay to "Concrete Jungle". Also while you're at it, please take a moment to snap a Before picture of the soon-to-be-locked victim so you can upload it along with an After pic for our Happy Nappy Gallery! Hey, tune's over! Get back to work you dirty, good-fer-nothin' hippies!

Step 2 - Section

The key to easy- to- maintain locks is good, clean sectioning. It’s tempting to get lazy about this because it can get tedious – but down the road you’ll be so happy you resisted! We’ve found the best way to get started is to work horizontally, from the nape of your neck (aren’t you glad you brought along a friend?)  and work your way up.

Lay your Foundation

-Using your comb, section across the back of your head, parallel to your hairline. Pin or tie up all the hair above this line.
-Starting at the left or right hand side (whatever is the most comfortable for you) section out enough hair to grab an index finger sized lock. Pin or tie the rest of the section out of your way.  

Building your Brick-lay

When you’ve finished working your way across, simply repeat this sectioning up and around your head, staggering your smaller sections to lie between those below them in a brick-lay pattern. This will help your dreads appear fuller, because the ones above will hide that gap between the ones below! Take special care to bricklay your sections at the top of your head to avoid a blinding part down the middle of your head by grabbing sections from either side of the part and locking it up that way, criss-cross style. Jump! Jump!
 

Step 3 - Backcomb

Backcombing is exactly what it sounds like! Take your first section of hair and place the comb about one inch from the roots, and comb the hair backwards to your scalp again. You’ve created a tangle and pushed it up to your scalp in one motion. Start at the root and work down to the tip until you’ve created a tight and consistent texture, without any weaker thin spots. It’s really important that you get a good tight tangle going on up at your roots – this is what’s going to help your new growth dread!

This phenomenon is also known as those #!@*! roots. See the FAQ page of the website for everything you ever wanted to know about those roooots, bloody roooots that never lock. PLEASE DON'T e-mail us about them as everything we know is in the FAQs already, promise.

When you’ve got your section nice and knotty, twist it gently into a cylinder. You may be surprised to find this lock is a lot shorter than the rest of your unlocked hair, especially if you have quite fine hair. Don't worry, you're doing everything right. It's normal for locks to end up about 1/3rd shorter that the length you originally started with.

TIP! If you’re not concerned about breaking hair (hey, remember that time you backcombed your entire head?), you can also use what is known as the twist & rip method after tightly backcombing the length of the new lock for increased knot tightness. Grab two sides of the new lock and rip it apart, drawing the knots up tighter against the scalp, then twist the lock around, grab two new sides and rip toward the scalp again, twisting, ripping and moving down the length of the lock to the tip until only the end is loose.  We’ll tell you what to do with that loose end later.

Another thing to note is this process of pulling and back-combing may cause occasional scalp discomfort, but no pain, no nappy locks, baby. You can also tell your friend to take it a little easier up there, gah!

Step 4 - Wax

*Product-Free/Tightening Gel Method*: Skip to Palm Roll

Product Method - Wax: Open Knotty Boy Dread Wax. Breathe in the delicious aroma of clover fields and fresh beeswax. Soon your whole head will be swimming with this fantastic fragrance and you might even fall down. What, it could happen!
OK, pay attention. If you're using a jar of Wax, upon opening it you’ll notice that the surface is really hard and smooth. The harder formula is great for keeping the wax where you want it – on your dreads, not your face! Take your fingernail, tip of your comb, spoon, whatever and break the surface in so that you can easily take a pea-sized amount. Work that wax in your fingers to soften it and ease out any clumps. (If you're using a Wax Roll-Up Stick, it’s as easy as rolling a little of the Wax up and you're ready to go.)

Next, massage it in to your backcombed and twisted section, starting at the roots and working down to the ends. Take more small blobs of Wax as you need it, massaging and twisting as you go down the lock. Caution: you only need to use enough wax to bind the loose hairs together – less is more! It’s much easier to add more than it is to live with a waxy mess! If you're using the Wax Stick, you'll start at the root and just run the Stick lightly down the length of the lock once or twice. Again, it's better to start with less than you think you need and add more a little at a time.

Use your good judgment about how much your locks need to keep them together in the beginning stages!

Step 5 - Palm Roll

Once you've got your new lock sufficiently backcombed, waxed and twisted, you want to give it what we call a palm roll. Dreads need friction to form, and this is how you provide it: take a new lock, and you guessed it, roll it quickly and vigorously between the outer blades of your palms, thereby making it tighter, more knotted and into a very nice looking, cylindrical, well-groomed dreadlock.  RULE: The more you palm roll during the lifetime of your locks, the faster they will form and the more uniform they will look. We can’t stress enough how important palmrolling is to maintaining neat and healthy locks! Get used to it now.

*Tightening Gel Method: If you’ve opted for the Tightening Gel as a wax-alternative for starting your locks, simply add 1 part Gel to 3 parts water in a spray bottle, shake well and don’t soak, just lightly spritz over the new lock before palm rolling.
 

Step 6 - Repeat

Now simply repeat the whole step-by-step process on the rest of that loose hair the whole live-long day! Well, it won't really take all

Lovely Laura walks you through her dreadin' experience. Check it out! »

day... actually, yes, it will... well, about 3-5 or even more hours of it anyway. But hey! The coolest thing about locks is that almost everyone is SO excited about how different and great they look with them once they're done, it just doesn't even matter how long it took to get them. Dreadlocks are a process, and a journey and you’ve just taken the first step. Doesn’t it feel good?

Additional Secret Tricks!

• Run a blowdryer over your new locks once they're all in to help melt Knotty Boy Dread Wax into the core of the lock, where it'll bind all that loose hair together and do it's job to get you locked up faster and tighter.
   
• If you want your locks to have blunted tips rather than wispy ends, take the loose hair at the end of each lock and roughly pull them apart, thereby drawing the knots up into the bottom of the lock, making the ends tighter and breaking off the stray hairs. Don't worry, it may not feel right to intentionally damage your hair like this... but... remember that time you backcombed your entire head? You can also 'scribble' the end of the lock into the palm of your hand in a circular motion to ball up the end hairs and make the tip more blunted.

After Pic

Take your After Pic. Upload pics to the Knotty Family Album of the Happy Nappy Dreadlock Gallery. Don't be shy if your locks are short, skinny or new! You'll be an inspiration for other new dreadies out there to see that you're going through the same normal stages they are with their own baby locks. Send us your artwork and we'll use it to decorate our Art Gallery, too!
 

All done? Well, hot dang...!

 

Welcome to the Knotty Family!

Congrats, newly nappy Knotty one! Them dreadies are finally done! Now read on for some other really useful tips about immediate dreadlock after-care.

  

 Continue on to the Dreadlock Care page...

 

Be sure to also check out our massive FAQ pages for even more help with starting and maintaining your new locks!