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Quasiquixotic
July 10th, 2014, 03:59 PM
Is this a myth? I feel like I have this. My hair is 3.5" in circumference. I'm pretty sure it's mostly fine, but I'm not positive so I put f/m in my stats. I recently got mini forks with an fpl of 2 3/8" they are too small to use for twin buns. My hair is only 21" long. Not even apl. I can't get them stable. So um, is it user error? Am I crazy? Can fine hair be voluminous or not compactable?

thanks in advance!

:blossom:

quasi

red-again
July 10th, 2014, 04:02 PM
Well, I am m and ii more iii and my hair compacts my circ is 4.5 or just under. Was so surprised when I did my ponytail thickness and it was so full. Oh, well!

lilin
July 10th, 2014, 04:22 PM
Is this a myth? I feel like I have this. My hair is 3.5" in circumference. I'm pretty sure it's mostly fine, but I'm not positive so I put f/m in my stats. I recently got mini forks with an fpl of 2 3/8" they are too small to use for twin buns. My hair is only 21" long. Not even apl. I can't get them stable. So um, is it user error? Am I crazy? Can fine hair be voluminous or not compactable?

thanks in advance!

:blossom:

quasi

You can have fine hair and a large ponytail circumference if you have a LOT of hair follicles. Fine and thin are different. Fine is the width of an individual hair, and thin is the volume of the hair all together. So, yes, you can be fine and thick at the same time. :D I have fine hair and my ponytail is about 3 inches, right in the middle of the "ii" range.

Quasiquixotic
July 10th, 2014, 04:29 PM
Right, so we are similar. Generally people with fine hair here have compactable hair. Even at long lengths they don't make large buns. So I'm confused. In the end, I guess it doesn't matter. My hair is what it is and barring sickness that won't really change. I am wondering if anyone here has fine hair, ii thickness and big buns :eyebrows:

lilin
July 10th, 2014, 05:09 PM
Right, so we are similar. Generally people with fine hair here have compactable hair. Even at long lengths they don't make large buns. So I'm confused. In the end, I guess it doesn't matter. My hair is what it is and barring sickness that won't really change. I am wondering if anyone here has fine hair, ii thickness and big buns :eyebrows:

They could very well have coarser hair, but also thinner hair -- less total follicles on the scalp. Or both fine and thin. Or possibly so textured that, yes, the hair just doesn't fully compact.

One example of how deceptive the "fine" designator can be is African women with curly/kinky hair. A lot of the time, their strands are actually quite fine indeed. But their ponytail sure isn't thin!

I though I had "thin" hair too for the longest time, and measuring my ponytail for LHC and getting hair toys has made me realize it's really not.

I got a Flexi8, and I spent a few minutes waffling about whether I should get a small or a medium, on the assumption that I had thin hair.

I got the medium, being worried it would be too big, and turns out it's too small for my bun! It actually holds half my hair in a bun perfectly (half-up or "Leah buns"). I need a large to hold all of my hair. Man, so glad I didn't get the small. I wouldn't have been able to do ANYTHING with it.

Larki
July 10th, 2014, 05:37 PM
My buns are smaller than my palm, but I'm pretty sure that normal because A) my hair is fine, and B) my hair's not especially long; even though it's waist-length, it's only 21 inches long.

xoChesleyy
July 10th, 2014, 05:59 PM
A lot of people are surprised to find that their "fine and thin" hair is actually thicker than they expected. I used to think that this was the case with my hair, but it turns out my hair type is actually an M with a 3.5"-4.0" circumference. As lilin was explaining, hair circumference/thickness and hair type are two completely different things. For instance, someone could have coarse hair and be an i with a 2.5" circumference, or have fine hair and be an iii with a 4.5" circumference. Everyone has a different amount of hair follicles on their head. The number of follicles is what determines the hair circumference. The individual hair strand thickness doesn't correlate with someone's overall circumference. So no, you aren't crazy. :p

torrilin
July 10th, 2014, 06:01 PM
If your sig pics are accurate, there's no way you're a 1b. You've got visible waves already, in visibly styled hair. So that's definitely a factor. You're probably somewhere in the 2s, but we won't have a good idea for a while yet since it's hard to type very short hair.

Additionally, I would personally not call a 2 and 3/8th inch thing a "fork". It's a hairpin. I'd expect to need 2-3 to secure each twin bun on myself, with more being needed the shorter my hair is. I would not typically expect to be able to get twin buns into my hair at your length, tho it might be possible with coarser hair than mine. It's easier to secure longer hair, which is I think counter-intuitive for a lot of people. So if you've got 2, the issue isn't that your hair is weird and not compactable, it's that you're using too few hair pins for your length.

The third weird thing is that a longer pin or fork or stick is sometimes easier to secure. I usually use 3" roller pins as the absolute shortest possible pin for my 3" ponytail, 1c and F hair. Because my hair is fine and straight and slippery, a shorter pin will just slide right out, and the shorter my hair, the faster the slide. A 4" working length is often better, and I've regularly used pencils as hair sticks when they're 6-8" long and my hair is APLish.

Crystawni
July 10th, 2014, 06:18 PM
Quasi, I'm finding the longer my hair is getting, the more torque I can get on twists that sit closer to my head, thus tighter, not so floofy buns. My circ. is like yours at 9cm (3.5"). The shorter my hair, the more it would bounce out and not behave. I don't think I'd've been able to use the mini forks at your length (I'm over 4" longer than you at the moment).

Loviatar
July 10th, 2014, 06:22 PM
I am wondering if anyone here has fine hair, ii thickness and big buns :eyebrows:

Hello... :lol:

Big buns of BOTH kinds here! Haha.

I have fine hair - my f/m stems from when I used to henna, I forgot to change it. The majority is definitely fine. But even though I call my bun puny, it's puny due to length. It's wide. It's big, for what it is.

I currently have a ton of leftover pixie layers, so the entire front half of my hair (imagine if I were wearing an invisible Alice band, so anything in front of that line) falls out of a ponytail. My ponytail circ is currently 3". So I'm currently a ii. But my type says III because From what I recall when I had a henna'd blunt cut it was 4.75 (I'm not sure I'd get quite that thick w/I henna, but I think it would be at least 4" - I'm curious to see.)

I always felt my buns at my so-far longest length, 23" in about 2009-2010, were pretty big. I'll see if I can dig out a photo, but most of my old pics are length shots not updo shots.

ETA: here you go - from my "messing about with color" days

Etta Mae tulipwood fork at just under 21"
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j47/Kate_Blacksmith/Action%20Shots/DSCF0694.jpg (http://s77.photobucket.com/user/Kate_Blacksmith/media/Action%20Shots/DSCF0694.jpg.html)

full size GTS Threnody cedar fork at 22.5"
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j47/Kate_Blacksmith/Action%20Shots/AFP027.jpg (http://s77.photobucket.com/user/Kate_Blacksmith/media/Action%20Shots/AFP027.jpg.html)

Emelyn
July 10th, 2014, 06:44 PM
Hmm... My ponytail circumference is 9cm and my hair is fine (I thought it was f/m but I was wrong). My hair does compress quite a bit but my bun still seems quite big. Yesterday I cut 4" off (so I'm now an inch past waist) and I found that I had trouble using a 5" stick in a LWB. My hair just slips around the edges. Everyone is different, I suppose :shrug:

Quasiquixotic
July 10th, 2014, 07:05 PM
Thank you all for the replies.

I'm guessing at my type. I never typed it (or knew about type) when it was long in the past. My second siggy photo has a lot of flipping from my shoulders. I have less volume now. But from memory my hair is 1 something. Won't hold a curl. I can do bun waves, but that's about it. Very straight. I'm interested to see what it really is too.

Beborani
July 10th, 2014, 07:18 PM
This is an old paper but I am sure factually correct in measurements.

http://journal.scconline.org/pdf/cc1977/cc028n05/p00219-p00230.pdf

torrilin
July 10th, 2014, 08:30 PM
Hmm... My ponytail circumference is 9cm and my hair is fine (I thought it was f/m but I was wrong). My hair does compress quite a bit but my bun still seems quite big. Yesterday I cut 4" off (so I'm now an inch past waist) and I found that I had trouble using a 5" stick in a LWB. My hair just slips around the edges. Everyone is different, I suppose :shrug:

The 3" and 4" lengths I was giving were for hairpins or short hair forks, not hair sticks. Most hairpins are 2" or 3" long, and the 2" length seems to be the easiest to find. I routinely wind up finding that a 2" hairpin is useless no matter how many I use. Mileage definitely varies, but from what I've seen, *very* few LHC members have a use for 2" hairpins. Those who do use them tend to have m or c hair.

5" hair sticks are useful for me, but at 9cm vs my 7.5cm... you've got a *lot* more hair than me. If I remember the math right, that's pretty close to double the hair I have :D.

Emelyn
July 10th, 2014, 08:46 PM
The 3" and 4" lengths I was giving were for hairpins or short hair forks, not hair sticks. Most hairpins are 2" or 3" long, and the 2" length seems to be the easiest to find. I routinely wind up finding that a 2" hairpin is useless no matter how many I use. Mileage definitely varies, but from what I've seen, *very* few LHC members have a use for 2" hairpins. Those who do use them tend to have m or c hair.

5" hair sticks are useful for me, but at 9cm vs my 7.5cm... you've got a *lot* more hair than me. If I remember the math right, that's pretty close to double the hair I have :D.

Ah! Sorry, I misunderstood! :o

hairhair
July 10th, 2014, 10:12 PM
I have fine hair and my ponytail is about 3.9 inches! Compared to how "big" my hair looks when it's out (I can comb it down the front and have 360-wraparound hair, it's insane), it's unbelievably small when in a braid/ponytail!

red-again
July 11th, 2014, 04:17 AM
I made a lot of sense last night! In my defence I was shattered, was late and had been a long day!
Meant to say, I have medium hair and it's thick, more iii nowadays. I have big buns for my length, I am in a L ficcare and can use an L even for the tail on a French twist but, down it is pretty silky and lies flat. Doesn't look like iii hair

Zebra Fish
July 11th, 2014, 04:18 AM
My hair is really fine and I always thought reaaaaalllyyyyyy thin, but it measures 6 cm, so I kinda fall in the normal thickness. But when I braid or bun, it soooo small (an M ficcare is too big, I hope S won't be when I manage to get me one :o), you would definitely say it is thin. It doesn't even look really big when it is out, but it definitely doesn't look as thin as when in bun or braid. If I were you, I wouldn't mind that it looks big :p

StellaKatherine
July 11th, 2014, 05:41 AM
I have both F and M hairs on my head. Opposite to others I've never considered my hair to be fine before, I thoght it was M, but by doing S&D I noticed clearly different hairtypes. I am one of those who gets the compact effect... My braids look so thin, only at first day after washing my braid looks somehow ok and after that it just get thinner and thinner. My buns are small especially for 38 inch hair lenght. But in the end we are all individuals so I am not suprised that even a fine hair behaved in different ways.

Anje
July 11th, 2014, 11:04 AM
I'm a bit confused. If your circumference is 3.5 inches, that IS how much your hair compacts down to, isn't it? It's not like you're going to crush it down smaller....


I am wondering if anyone here has fine hair, ii thickness and big buns :eyebrows:
Well, my hair's mostly fine (there's some medium in there, though), 2.5" in circumference. A cinnamon bun on me is about 5" across these days. At a similar length a few years back, it was somewhat smaller, more like 4" across. I had considerable taper then, and maintaining at this length have grown quite a bit of it out. I don't know if that's a big bun, but it's not a doorknob. OTOH, a snug self-holding nautilus bun tends to be considerably smaller, more like a baseball sticking out from the back of my head.

Stray_mind
July 15th, 2014, 07:48 AM
My hair is fine and my ponytail circumference is 3.14 inches. My buns and braids look relatively thick and i am quite satisfied with that.

Vanilla
July 15th, 2014, 04:25 PM
I found that my hair only really started compacting well at around waist+ (and that's around the time that I could really start doing nautilus buns). I had a considerable amount of layering at shorter lengths, and while my layers weren't all poking out, it made my buns harder to compact.

I can wear some shorter forks and hairpins, but generally they can only be used in a nautilus bun, and when my hair is a few days post wash.

stachelbeere
July 15th, 2014, 05:12 PM
me, me! I have the same ponytail circumference as you, OP, and my hair is BSLish at the moment but my buns have always been..erm...rather big for their length. not super huge, but if I bought a flexi8 I'd probably choose the large one at the moment.

My hair basically fluffs up so easily (self-teasing hair hehe :P) - here is an example from today (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=118393&page=32&p=2766639&viewfull=1#post2766639): hair from June and July - in June my hair was a bit wet still from being washed (or over-oiled, one of the two) - in July it was almost completely dry. I also have a picture from July where it looks like even more hair.

StellaKatherine
July 15th, 2014, 05:26 PM
I am starting to feel, that it depence a lot on the updo I make. Like if I english braid and bobypin my bun it is much smaller looking than for example celtic knot or chineese buns and such. Sticks and forks do "push" your bun wider as well. My buns started to look suprisingly big since I started wearing sticks and forks.... :hmm:

AmberJewel
July 16th, 2014, 09:39 PM
My hair is fine and on the thinner side of ii - just over 2". I forget the exact measurement, it's been awhile. Anyways, mine compacts pretty well and it can be a pain trying to make a bun or braid look respectable. Parandi are a wonderful discovery for me. Congratulations on your thickness!