Ashes?

We went to a friend's b-day party this afternoon and being that the birthday girl was the only person we knew we engaged strangers in various conversations. One of those happened to be about hair, locs in particular. A young woman told me that in her teen years she helped someone with soft curly hair install his locs and he did it with heavy wax of some sort, which required the use of a blow dryer to melt it in, ashes to dry out the hair, and several other things I can't recall at the moment because this was hours ago and I think I was so horrified and yet intrigued about the ashes that I couldn't properly focus on the rest. I do recall her saying it took about 6 hours and the initial installation was some kind of kit her friend her gotten on the internet. I have read a lot about starting and maintaining locs over the years but ashes was a new one for me. I guess you really do learn something new every day.