A few years ago I happened upon an old hand-heated curling iron at a flea market. I think I paid $2 for it. I have seen virtually identical ones available from Sears catalogues in the 1900s, so I assume it dates to that era.
I've written before about the trouble with old time curling irons -- that is, they tend to burn your hair off because there's no way to effectively test how hot it is. Familiar with the problem, I wasn't about to dare testing this thing on my own hair... so I got out a piece of Kanekalon to use as the victim. Kanekalon, supposedly, can be styled like normal hair with hot irons (in fact, it's the only way to style it -- it doesn't take water like real hair) and I've dealt with ironing Kanekalon before so it does hold up to a point.
I heated the iron over the stove for, I'd guess, about 15 seconds.
I used a piece of paper to test the iron -- I'd heard of this trick being done in the era. The idea was that if it doesn't scorch the paper, it won't scorch your hair either. When the paper came out clean, I went to work on the Kanekalon.
The first effort was burned immediately.
Second section came out a bit better -- the extra few seconds of cooling time seemed to make a difference.
From what I read, Kanekalon is a little more sensitive than real hair, so perhaps 15 seconds of heat wouldn't ruin natural hair the same way... but do you really want to find out?
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