About “estimates”

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#1

Same kid I’m working on (finished in 2 weeks … back, shoulders and neck, etc., … the kid with the thick asymmetrical hairline as seen in another post).

Looking at the photos of his back that he sent me, I thought about 40 hours for the first clearance. Actually, when I saw him “in the flesh” I still though 40 would be about right; maybe less. As always, I take a photo of at least one area so we can see our progress. (See photo 1).

However, when I “got into” this case I realized that there were “a zillion” tiny “shooters” (accelerating vellus hairs) right in the middle of his back (and on the sides)! Add in more time for the “no-see-ums.” (Oh yeah, he added in some butt hair too.)

The total for the entire first clearance was 50 hours! However, now I’m pretty much “spot on” to accurately predict the final TTT of this case. But I wanted to share with my colleagues that estimates are just that: “estimates” … and most of the time (at least for the first clearance) the exact numbers of hours is a bit “out of reach.” (The client had no problem with my “goofed-up” estimate.)

Photo 2 shows the cleared back, and photo 3 focuses on immediate post-treatment of the “shooters” in the center of his back (damn shooters).

This kid had scabs that disappeared almost immediately (lots of showers) so I was not able to photograph anything that looked “nice and ugly.” (The sides of the back in photo 2, that look like there was little hair, actually did have a lot. Again, the scabs disappeared immediately)



#2

It’s a pity Hairtell does not have a “like” button :grin:

1 Like
#3

Lovely work Michael, clients often say they want the back cleared and more often than not its also the biceps and triceps too. They can often take as much time as the back, it would be interesting to know what time was spent on the upper arms, the actual back was probably cleared in about 30-35?

#4

Thanks for the kind comments. (I do not deserve any kindness, really; I’m a dreadful old man.)

I don’t remember exactly what the arms took in hours, but they were REALLY ugly and thick with hair. (I seldom photograph the really nasty/gross areas so the client doesn’t EVER have to “remember” that nightmare.)

I’m slowly starting to panic, because I only have 2-dozen of my favorite tapered needles left (no longer made). I hear-tell of this awesome craftsman in “the Eastern US” (I think “upstate NY?”) that makes needles … and ACTUALLY LISTENS to electrologists and then makes their tools the way they want them … hummmm. He listenes? Interesting concept?

Oh … mhawkes, have you heard from “our boy” in Winchester yet?

#5

I don’t believe for a minute you’re a ‘dreadful old man’.

Haven’t heard from Winchester yet, but really looking forward to seeing your work.

#6

I like how you let the hair on the back of his arms go up into his underarms, very nice taper. Farmer tan because of the sun is ok but not with hair. and it would be nice to have a like button.

#7

Great work as usual and soon I will be in his place :smiley: Curious about what you mentioned: vellus hairs. With your experience and expertise can you just tell that those wil become terminal hairs or are you taking precautions? Either way I admire your efforts to sort of place yourself in the client’s shoes.

#8

:wink:

#9

Thanks again for the kind comments.

I think all of us “lunatics-in-the-trade” can look at a tiny hair and discern if it’s a true vellus hair (one that will most likely not accelerate) or a “shooter”: a vellus hair that is getting progressively larger due to hormone stimulation. Kill the shooters!

It’s important to focus on this differentiation with young clients since most of them will present “shooters.” A lot, however, depends on the age at which the hairs started their “evil transgressions.” Hairs are, of course, totally depraved!

With this young man, his body hair was (as he states) almost fully grown-in at age sixteen. I’m pretty sure this is an accurate account, because his terminal hairs are MUCH longer than they normally would be on a 23-year-old. If I were only looking at a close-up photo of his hairs, and did not know his age, I would have guessed him to be about 40-years-old.

See, hairs not only change in number, they also change in length as well. Young men (girls too) will have short body hairs that lay flat on the skin (even terminal hairs). As they age, the hair length increases even if the actual number seems to diminish. Other aging changes also take place … including the dreaded “white hairs!”

That I “put myself in the clients place?” Oh that’s WAY easy … I was a client and have also been through the “hair removal nightmare.” And it is a nightmare.

For me ALL forms of hair removal “suck.” None of it’s easy and it’s too expensive … and we still don’t have the fast, perfect, painless remedy that we should have in this “modern age.”

If anyone tells you they have an easy, fast and painless hair removal process that’s permanent … they are a big fat liar.

#10

Michael? Do you think the fast, perfect, painless remedy will be ever invented?

#11

Michael Bono - well-deserved compliments galore goes to you!

This is a masterpiece.

This kind of work is not easy, folks.

I would recommend that you contact Mike Roy about your probe needs. He is another masterpiece maker!

#12

This is really amazing stuff. The whole distribution of the hair seems unusual though. Looks like he had laser?

#13

^I think it’s developing because the client is young. I’m the same age and he had much more hair on the shoulders than me, but my back hair was more developed than his. Although I also have less hair on that patch on the lats behind the armpits.

#14

Interesting comments. But it’s REALLY not amazing … it’s completely banal, commonplace, predictable … no biggie! He’s just another new member of the “brotherhood of the hair” club.

I’ve been doing backs for nearly 40 years and this guy’s pattern is very normal (things never look right in a photo). His hairs are correctly distributed and exactly what they should be … no surprises. Please don’t hastily make judgments based on photos.

Having said this, this fellow spent two years (at a university medical center) having laser hair removal! He spent $8,000 (chest, back and arms). After two years and virtually no results, they returned $6,000; he’s somewhat happy. I still think he has a case.

Now, I’m ONLY saying that this was ONE person’s experience … and, I do not want to get into some “fiddle-dee-dong” with the Hairtell “laser-defenders.” Laser works on some and not on others. (Frankly, I had expected to see some results from laser … there were no results!) Folks, I have seen “no results” from electrolysis too! So, well, there it is.

I think the only important thing anyway is to SHOW the work (all work) and state the hours and costs. WAY too much of what is said in the “public square” is simply repetition of what is commonly believed. Aren’t we all getting sick of “opinions?”

SHOW YOUR WORK!
And, that’s about all I’m planning on doing from now on.

Opinions? The “telogen cannot be treated” stuff (that drives me crazy) will never go away. The “thermolysis is faster” is also an enduring fixture in the mythology of hair removal. (Yeah, there is a whole list.) It still annoys me, but I suppose I just have to get used to it.

I’m going to post a few more photos “tomo” to illustrate the insane thickness of this poor soul’s body hair. He’s a super-nice kid and I’m enjoying having him around. I think I’ve never met anyone from Oregon that wasn’t way cool!

#15

hehehehhe

Michael took me to task recently over the “thermolysis is faster” concept.It CAN be true, but in 99% of cases isnt!

The case where it can be more EFFICIENT ( notice my wording here, I did NOT say faster!) is when you have an extremely proficient professional, who prefers thermolysis, and is VERY VERY good at it. But for 99.9 % of the electrolysists out there, it just isnt the case.Why? Look at the mechanics.
It takes the average driver, upon recieving a stimulus, 3-5 seconds to react to that stimulus and hit the brake.The brain, and body, just DONT work that quickly. It’s the same with electrolysis. The electrologist must react, usually to the beep of the machine, they must hear it, that must travel to their brain which says " With draw the probe , pluck the killed hair, and insert into the next. That process, takes minimum 5-8 seconds most times IF the electrologist is fast.It takes me on average 15-30 seconds to do a self insertion.
So if the difference in timing between blend and thermolysis is 1/2 a second, it makes little or no difference.Because that’s not the bottleneck, the electrologist’s reaction time is… This is why Josefa works so fast, not because she’s using a specific modulation ,but because her reaction time is extraordinary. I’ve watched her video’s, often she has already withdrawn the probe and reinserted before my brain has even registered the beep from the machine.

Sorry Michael! I just HAD to…you knew if you brought that one up I was gonna comment!

Michael, I’m getting closer to showing my work. Unfortunately getting separated six months ago meant the ex got to keep half my stuff, including the digitalcamera. My cell phone just isnt that great.But tommorrow I’ll post some face pics, from 2 months go, and today.I wont win any speed awards though, but maybe encourage one or two of the other DIY’ers.

Seana

#16

I believe most electrologists are not doing a fast blend, when they choose the blend modality, like I think I understand that you are doing Michael, with minimum amount of time spent in the follicle being four seconds or more. I saw a demonstration of the fast blend on one of Josefa’s YouTube videos and I’m am still thinking about that days later. Is sodium hydroxide really forming in that amount of time? Not sure what I am seeing ( or understanding).

#17

When I was doing classes in New Zealand, another electrologist/author, Neil Blok (originally from Holland), insisted that to do the blend properly, one must first start the DC (and insert with the DC ON) and only then apply the HF.

Neil reckoned that if a person started the HF first (or at the same time), the follicle would “dry up” and not allow lye to form. (Sounds plausible.) He called his technique “live probing,” and (for some idiotic reason) it caused a storm of controversy.

Neil also thought needles had to be “rough,” not smooth, so that the lye would “swirl.” He referred to me as “that NUTS of a Bono” and was ready for a “fight!” (Seriously, he was a nasty ugly little shit.)

Everyone at a big conference in “Aotearoa” (Auckland) THOUGHT I was going to get involved in some sort of “war” with the guy. Everyone warned me beforehand that a big WAR was about to begin!

So, I was asked (at my lecture) what I thought about this revolutionary process. I could hear the audience “gasp.”

I said, “I think it’s a good idea … and I do this myself most of the time. I’m not sure I buy the “drying follicle stuff” … but it SEEMS TO WORK FINE. End of war! Well, it never started.

And, so it is all the time: parsing out opinions based on suppositions … and then “making something of it.” And, of course, this applies to EVERY modality of hair removal. It’s basically “shit piled on top of shit.”

(Actually, Seana, I had to giggle a bit about our conversation. None of it was “new” to me … in fact; I’ve covered this same ground hundreds of times over the last few decades. And THANKS kiddo! Kiss kiss! And, I’ll never do this again, ever!)

So to answer your question Dee, about “fast blend” (that might not be a REAL blend), or that “most elecrologists don’t go that fast." Actually, YES they do … if they know what the hell they are doing! EVERY blend operator I know works like this! … And “can lye form in less than 2-seconds,” etc.?

Let me only say, “I don’t care!” After nearly 40 years of dissecting “opinion” … I don’t care! I can’t prove or disprove any of your notions, so I don’t care!

Indeed, I do see lye “frothing” like crazy in the “less than 2-second blend,” and I assume that lye is forming. However, I still don’t care! And, I don’t care what that “bubbly stuff” really is either. Furthermore, I don’t care how thermolysis works either: it works!

As I’m trying to say, professional conversations always get into “jib-jab” about something that is not provable. Whole threads get gobbled-up with suppositions and conjecture, again about how people think things happen, or should happen.

Nothing matters except if the “fill-in-the-blank” is killing follicles! It’s ONLY about results, and results CAN be documented: Black & White, Plus or Minus!

Take photos, count up hours, and confirm (observe and photograph) the CLEAR permanently hairless skin. And keep records of everything! And don’t get involved in dissecting “theory and supposition."

Indeed, I DO know why people do this “dissecting.” It’s so that they (all of us and ME included) can hold onto beliefs they are comfortable with. It’s only human and we do this ALL the time.

Beliefs have no place in science.

Observe, count-up hours and post photographs (electrolysis and laser) and don’t “jib-jab” about what is not provable by any means at our disposal.

Just do what JOSSIE (Josepha) does and “forget about it!”

1 Like
#18

Okay, appreciate your stories, Mike.

So, Josefa, what did your levels look like on the Instantron and the Platinum when you did this fast blend? I want to try it.

#19

Gasp! Dee! You didnt just ask…what I THINK you did?

Ok, so I’m poking a little fun at you. But had I asked the same question, I undeniably would have been shot down. I can take a GUESS as to what said levels look like though by piecing together little bits I DO know.
To get the kind of lye production Michael described, I have to be hitting 0.50-0.65 Millampere’s of DC current. I’m guessing closer to 0.60-0.65 ma. He tends to do his thermolysis first, and my presets tell me on a course arm hair that 88% thermolysis for 0.5 seconds works . So if I’m right, you are probably looking at those ranges for about 1/2 a second or slightly more each which falls in line with what I know of Michaels timing.
But I eagerly await Josefa’s answer, cause I want to know too! I’m always up for experimentation, just, not on my face. But that’s my guestimate.

I eagerly await the shitstorm I probably just started, cause well, I do have a tendancy to step in it!

Seana

#20

To all who might not know: until i bought my Pure id did almos all of my work using fast blend (pulsed belnd on the Apilus Junior with a base time of 1 sec).

Yes it is … it usuallay takes a few tenths of a second in a “warm” environment, until the “foam” even may exit the follicle as we are used to it.

As to the speed: if a fast electrologist like Jossie, but also several others is in her or his “Zen mode” and if the hair densitiy is still sufficiently high to keep the “search time” down the time difference between modern flash thermolysis and these fast blend modes actually matters.

To my experience the fast blend techniques usually reguire larger settings than those we can achieve with our highly optimized flash setups: to my experience the intensity of RF can be lowered by O(10%) when the galvanic current is added (Observed on the Apilus Junior with Ballet gold probes).

I am pretty sure that there is significant room for optimisation, e.g., using the tapered needle Michael prefers and probably intelligent modulation of the pulse analogously to the tricky modalities that make modern flash electrolysis so efficient (and less harmful).