Density and Grey Percentage Tests

I have begun thinking about my next hairpiece.  I still haven't finished cutting in the first one, but due to the problems with density and colour, I am eager to move on to the next one.  I have been experimenting with different densities and colour/grey combinations, and I think I'm getting closer to what I'm shooting for.  The first step was to dye the hair.  My hair naturally is a dark ash blonde, which is what I was trying for in the first piece.  However, it seems to be getting darker as I get older, so I have progressed to a very dark brown-black (which I think would be a 1B in the standard colour system) and it seems to be working, at least at the back and sides.  The hair on top of my head is still more ashy brown, so I might try to vary the colour throughout the piece to more closely approximate what's left of my real hair.  We will see how things go... :)

Anyway, here is what I have been working on.  I have ventilated a couple of small patches, both with different densities and grey percentages.  The first is 66% density with 50% grey:

The test patch sitting on my arm.

The second is 63% density with 21% grey.  If I decide not to vary the colour throughout the piece, then this is the one I think I will use:

An interesting accidental discovery:  The grey synthetic hair I'm using is longer than the dark human hair, so when I ventilate them together I get a beautiful fade from dark to light grey.  Unfortunately all the light grey will be cut out in the final piece, but it's something I might try to incorporate in a future project.  The one thing I really don't like about the synthetic hair is that the pressure of knotting in onto the lace causes it to develop a kink near the base of each hair.  Although this does straighten out a bit with time, it never really disappears completely.  I made the mistake of trying to wash the first patch with hot water to see if it would relax the kink.  Unfortunately it only loosened my knots!  If you look closely at the first pic you will see some large loops in the hairline.  I definitely won't use hot water again!

This last pic show my process of bleaching the knots.  Rather than spread the bleach on the back of the lace as I have seen many people do, I prefer to cover a styro head with plastic wrap and spread a thin layer of bleach solution onto the plastic.  I tie up the hair of the piece to keep it out of the way, and lower the lace into the bleach, pulling it tight and pinning it down so that the bleach oozes through the holes a bit.  I find it easier to control this way: