Second, a doll with hair this tangled is never going to come out with pristine hair like the original. There will be a lot of hair loss due to breakage in the knots and age. An up-do or lots of curls will be necessary in the final styling to disguise the damage. BUT --- this particular mess is extreme - a doll with normal length hair that is moderately tangled would take less than half this time to comb out and style with near-pristine results - results will always depend on extent of damage.

Third, I do not claim to have created any of these methods. I found them in various books and websites offered by other doll customizers and restorers. Most of you have already seen most of this before, maybe just not on such a tangled longhaired doll.

This is the doll "before". She was in a plastic bag with a $2.99 price tag, and was half-off of that price on that day.
So why even bother? Just look at this beautiful face!!!

Instructions: 1. Wash the entire doll including hair in dishwashing detergent to get out the dirt and any sticky stuff.

2. Soak the hair in fabric softener for at least an hour, to overnight. Fabric softener is the equivalent to synthetic hair that crème rinse is to human hair. Use a good brand; the generic stuff is too weak. I use scent-free because I donıt care for perfumes, but scents are okay if you want. Softener also gives the hair a radiant shine. For moderately tangled hair, the usual amount is about 3 parts water to one part softener. For this mess I used a much stronger concentration of softener.

3. After soaking, start combing out the hair while the softener is still on. For this longer hair I used my fingers first to start pulling out the tangles. Start at the ends and work your way to the scalp. I often added straight softener to the hair while combing to help detangle. If a dollıs hair is in fairly good condition and shorter, take great care not to pull the strands too hard to prevent breakage. On a badly tangled mess, pulling hard cannot be helped, so the main thing to avoid is not pulling any hair plugs out of the scalp. Hold the hair firmly in one hand while detangling with the other.

4. This is what this doll looked like after the main knots were worked out. It still has lots of smaller tangles.

5. At this point I soaked the dollıs hair in softener again for about 30 minutes, then rinsed it out.

6. I started brushing the hair out with a wide toothed comb, starting at the ends. This should be done while watching TV, because it takes a long time, lots of patience, and can be quite boring otherwise.

7. A lot of broken off hair is caught in the knots and will start coming out as the knots are untangled. This much hair and more came off of this doll:

8. Once the hair is combed out, use a fine tooth comb to detangle the hair next to the scalp. Do this very gently to avoid pulled hair plugs out. Use short strokes from the scalp to just about an inch. Do not try to comb out the entire length of the hair with the fine tooth comb. This step is just to move tangles at the scalp lower, away from the scalp plug holes.

9. Now brush out the entire length of the hair with a plastic brush that does not have any tips on the bristles that would catch the hair. As you see from the picture, a this point the doll would make a great Lady Godiva, but I would hate to have to try to keep the hair brushed all the time. This is a very fine-hair with a lot of frizzy damage. There are a lot of things you could do at this point. The damaged ends could be trimmed off to a much shorter length, but then what would the point of having saved long hair? I am thinking spiral curls are the way to go here.

10. I put the hair in a ponytail. I did not use a rubber. I separated a single strand, twisted it and wrapped it around the hair into the ponytail and sew-tied it in place with nylon tread. I did this because I did not want the ponytail to be too tight so that the curls would fall more naturally. I then wrapped the rest of the strand around the head and sew-tied it in place:

11. Now I put a "tangleless" rubber band loosely around the tail to hold it in place while I perm. Later I cut it off again.

12. Because this doll's hair is so long, I can use regular perm rods and the thickness of the hair will hold them in place. I cut perm papers in half and wrapped a piece around the curler to cover the little teeth that would otherwise tangle the dolls hair. Then I put a paper on the end of a strand of hair leaving about 1 inch of the most damaged hair out. I trimmed the damaged hair off, trimming some of the paper with it. I start at one end of the curler, where my thumb is in the picture, and spiraled the hair to the other end of the curler. Get as close to the scalp as possible and keep the hair as even as possible to get the most uniform spiral curls. Clip the perm rod shut. If the rod tends to be too loose, hold it in place with a straight pin.

13. Perm: Bring a pan of water to boiling and turn off. Dip the doll hair in the boiling water for about 20 seconds, making sure all the rods are saturated. Then immediately rinse the hair in cold water. This sets the perm. Towel dry the hair.

14. Standard procedure is to let the hair dry overnight before unrolling. I am not that patient. I took the rods out while still wet. Unwind each rod very carefully in a spiraling motion. When all the rods are out, lay the doll flat to let the ringlets dry if you don't want them to lengthen, or stand the doll up if you do want the ringlets to stretch out some. Do not brush the ringlets!

15. Styling: When the hair dried, I took one of the ringlets from the side and gently piled it on top of the head in front of the ponytail. I started sew-tying the curls into a topknot. There was not master plan here, I just kept placing and sewing until it looked right. It took two ringlet strands to get the completed topknot.

16. Once finished, I sprayed the hair heavily with hairspray to keep in place.

17. I dressed the doll in a burgundy gown with matching bead and crystal jewelry. Meet Chianti, Goddess of the Red Wine Harvest! The next step to complete her look will be to repaint her face with burgundy lips and darker brows to match the gown. Since I don't know how to do that yet, it will be awhile.

18. Postnote: If I did this perm over again, I would do much tinier-tighter ringlets, but as we all know, hindsite is 20/20 and this looks too good to chance ruining it. Dollie-on! Cynthia T