His dreads did not need to be split (thank god!) but they did need major maintenance on loose hair. 5 months previous to seeing me he had gone to a salon and a woman spent 7 hours doing only god knows what. She had obviously flipped a few roots, not once, but over and over and over. The poor guy had beautiful dreads, up to a point, and then these tiny weak braided parts before thickening out again where he had the 5 months worth of growth. I probably could have unflipped them if I had seen it earlier, but they had kinda fused together and so nothing could be done about these parts. He is just going to have to grow them out.
I really wanted to take pictures of these areas of his dreads for the memories so people could see what effect root flipping has on hair if left and not recified, but alas, my friend has borrowed my camera.
My mainenance took 3 hours, and he said it looked way better than what the woman had done to him. She had also cut some of his dreads at the root, and now he has odd bald looking patches where he has got to grow out some hair to re section. We are going to wait and see what can be done about this as he didn't want to grow seperate dreads in these areas like I suggested.
So be warned. Do NOT go to salons unless you know someone with awesome dreads who visits them. And do not let ANYONE flip your dreads.