What units are you buying it in?

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The horsehair came from our own horses' moult and after we washed it it took 2 buckets of horsehair to stuff the liner and we could have easily used another half bucket. This summer I hope to make a liner for a early great bascinet and imagine that this will take at least 4 buckets.

Horsehair really compacts down and if tow has similar properties you will be looking at quite a lot in terms of volume. From memory I think that all the horsehair used weighed much less than a pound so you should try a pound of tow first as that may be enough.

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URL=http://www.jousting.co.nz

I suggest you make your final liner about 1/2" thick AFTER quilting. This means you will need the liner to be about 1" thick BEFORE quilting, depending on how tightly you pack the tow prior to closing it up. Tow has the advantage (of course it depends on the type of tow you have) of being able to be fluffed up quite a lot. You pull the strands apart, a little like teasing hair on your head. Horse hair shed can not be fluffed in the same way, and I have never believed that hair of any sort was used. My belief is that some foolish ignorant scholar mistook tow for hair and it's been down hill ever since. The tow I recently aquired from Van Dyke's Restorers looked very much like hair, but didn't have the associated smell. Perhaps felt was used on occasion, but I will have to see compelling evidence from someone for me to be convinced that hair was used over tow.

Kudos on a lovely web site! Pity your group is so far away! Let us know how your horse hair liner works out for you. I've heard that the horse hairs have a nasty habit of working themselves out of the fabric shell and sticking one in the scalp.

Regards

Thanks for these comments. I don't know how correct Jeff is or is not in his comments over horse hair not being used. I did find a reference to it a while back that was more solid then a written account but I will need to dig through my library at home to find it.

However we can't get tow down here so rather than use a synthetic padding I opted for horsehair which may or may not have been used but it was available historically.

To date I have found that it works really well. It packs down into a a very dense form of padding that provides good protection and a very comfortable fit. I have not had a problem with any hairs working their way through the linen liner. Perhaps this is because we followed Brian Price's idea of wrapping the body hair with mane or tail tail into very small balls before stuffing them into the liner. I don't know how period it is but it works. Because we washed the hair first there has been no trouble with smell either.

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URL=http://www.jousting.co.nz

If you have a real, primary reference to horse hair being used in helmet liners, please bring it on. I'd love to see some real evidence of it.

The place to look for answers to this question are in guild regulations (yes, there was a guild to cover makers of jacks and bascinet stuffers), where they lay out what material can be used, and what cannot.

I have seen 14th & 15th century references to tow (linen flax), linen, cotton and wool used for these purposes - I have yet to see a single reference to animal hair.

There is a doctoral thesis currently finishing up on the subject of textile armours in Medieval Europe. As soon as it is published, and I have a copy in hand, I can elaorate.

As to Brian Prices method - it may work, and it may be effective even - once you go through the bit about rolling it into balls. No extant lining I am aware of (and there are a few late 14th century ones) shows any indication of having been stuffed in such a fashion.

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What is the issue is here is what materials were used for padding them. Jeff asks if I can provide a primary reference for horse hair and the answer is that I can't as to my knowledge there is only one helmet liner surviving from the 14th century and I haven't read an account of how it was made. I saw a reference to "horse hair" in a secondary reference (a period as opposed to a victorian account) somewhere years ago which I'm trying to recall and I will "bring it on" when I can track it down.

Chef takes Jeff's position but says wool was used as well. This is animal hair. Whether or not this extended to cow, horse, human or any other form of hair is unclear.

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URL=http://www.jousting.co.nz

quote:

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Originally posted by Alienor:
Is there some consensus here, among those who have made such liners, that the method involves stuffing and then quilting? Do we know how it was done in period? The bascinet liners I have made, I have quilted down in tubes and then stuffed -- this was an unresearched method, but seemed the best I could figure out. Any comments?

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The extant lining that I have seen in person (at the Royal Armouries in Leeds) and the ones I have seen in books, have a distinctly tuffted appearance to thier quilting. Tuffting is done after stuffing, by stitching the layers together at points instead of in a continious line of stitches. I will try to dig out the pictures when I get back home.

quote:

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Originally posted by chef de chambre:
I have seen 14th & 15th century references to tow (linen flax), linen, cotton and wool used for these purposes - I have yet to see a single reference to animal hair.

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Hi Chef,
Brian Price and I were at the Wallace Study day in November of 1998. David Edge of the Wallace had several padded liners there, and at least one of them was animal hair.

Perhaps we could write him and get further reference. I will also look for my notes and see what I have there.

-Chuck

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-Chuck Davis

How do you know it was animal hair?

The tow I'm using now could be easily confused for animal hair, because it's very fine and soft.

quote:

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Originally posted by hauptmann:
Chuck,

How do you know it was animal hair?

snip

Please explain.

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That is just how it was reported to me. I didn't get to examine the stuffing material. The pieces were just set out on the table for us to look at. I hope that David Edge had someone do the identification.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.
-Chuck

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-Chuck Davis

This e-mail from David Edge regarding the subject of extant helmet liners was just forwarded to me.

quote:

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"As to helmet linings, all the examples I've come across so far, dating
from
1500 to the mid-17th century, have been raw cotton wadding... NOT raw wool,
and NOT horsehair. This was published in the 'Head-Protection' article that
I wrote (with others) for the journal "Neurosurgery" two or three years ago.
I've never ever encountered horse mane- or tail-hair, but horsehair
combings mixed with fine grass does crop up as the padding/stuffing of
16th-century saddle upholstery.

Hope that's of some help... All the best, David Edge"

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-Chuck Davis

It is Patrick Thadden, not I, who is due thanks. He had contacted Mr. Edge prior to the commencement of this thread, on a totaly unrelated project involving extant helmet liners.

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