Rush pith wicks

[tombear]

Since I was doing a batch of about 150 rush dips (would have been more but again t was a very poor crop near us and over 90% of what we picked were not viable) and there were several which broke I completely peeled some to use as candle wicks.

They had about a fortnights drying and yesterday I used one in lieu of my normal linen wick. After I'd finished the dips I strained the pure mutton tallow and added a hand full of unrefined bees wax granules since I had no candle stubs to improve the mix.

I poured the molton goo in as normal, topping up after 5 or 10 minutes after I'd sealed the other end with a blob of wax.

I then froze it overnight....

The pith would obviously not be strong enough to pull the candle from the mould so I cleared the end of the blob I sealed it with and and whacked the mould onto the table and the candlesicle popped out a treat.

The only fiddly bit was trimming the tip of the candle to expose the pith wick, all that was needed was 1/4 of a inch but 1/2 is better as it produces a full sized flame straight off.

It burns clean and produces no more smell than the linen or cotton wicks. It is fragile but that was to be expected.

ATB

Tom

 

[Dreadhead]

ooo very nice!

 

[Toddy]

I was thinking the same thing

Nice one Tom

cheers,
M

 

[tombear]

Off to Wales now for 16 days on Friday to the in laws cottage half way up Sugar Loaf but when I get back there's half a double boiler pan of the mix so I will make some more with pith wicks.

Atb

Tom

 

[British Red]

Now your really taking the pith! (sorry)

Awesome work Tom - you really do inspire me

 

[tombear]

Cheerss! I may have some related stuff for show and tell when we get back as on the 29th I've a appointment with the curator of domestic whatsits at St Fagans to have a look at some lighting and in particular rushlight related tinware to take some pics and measurements. Yup I've dug out a fresh pair of undertakers cotton gloves and padded the ends of some calipers with rubber tubing and hopefully will get the info needed to have my friends the tin smiths make me a accurate copy of a "dil".

Atb

Tom

 

[British Red]

Brilliant....I really must have a go at rushlights...I just have som much on at the moment....reglazing windows tomorrow, interspersed with harvesting and processing root crops. Still, its better than real work!

 

[Bowlander]

When's the best time for collecting rush stems? They are really green at the moment but 2 months ago they were 50/50 green/brown.

 

[tombear]

I like them, if we weren't already loaded down to the gunnels I'd take a tin with them and a couple of holders as the place is supposed to be 17th century and they would have been the main source of light back in the day. The fire place is about 5 foot wide and 3 foot deep with a swinging arm contraption . This time I'm taking my Aussie camp ovens, the jumbo trivet launditch Made me and the beeeg girdle bake stone Toddy let us have. We may have no choice but use them as we've been told the electricity has been patchy ( there's no gas, waters from a tank on the farm, there's no land line and mobile receptions hit and miss so there's no ordering take aways) .

Made well they are very pleasant to use, you just have to move them along every once in a while. The strip of skin (bark?) you leave on for strength curls up and self consumes like a modern wick so you get no ash and if you have single dipped them you get no drips, anyway they tend to run down the rush and cool/set before they come off.

If they are still green nows the time to get them, before they die off. Dontsoak them for more than 2 days as they go mushy at the thick end where the best pith is. Go for thickness rather than lenght although saying that the longer they are the thicker the base section is. I've found if you aim for 18 inches of usable stem you end up with plenty of good 15 inch ones. Oh and as early as possible think how you are going to store them, they need to be laying down in a cool dry airtight container for best results/ longevity. At the mo I'm desperately looking for a poster tube the kids have hid for me.


ATB


Tom

 

[British Red]

The swinging arm contraption is a "pivoting fire crane" Tom, brilliant things, there are various designs - some just pivoted, other allow you to slide the pot (or pots) along the arm. The very best types can be raised or lowered to vary cooking temperature. These were very ingenious....and expensive in their day

Red

 

[tombear]

Cheers, I can't remember if it has a mechanism for raising and lowering, hang on herself is interrupting me, yes it does have a height adjusting dohicky,

If you look in Seymour Lindsays " iron and brass implements of the English House", it's like the wrought iron pot hook no. 37. I'd forgotten how good that book is. Should do the job well.

Uw looking at that book I wish I had a forge and knew how to use it!

Atb

Tom

 

[Bowlander]

There's a couple of place names in the Dales that refer to rush wicks - Candlesieve sike in Swaledale and Weardale. BTW Sieve is another name for rush.

 

[tombear]

Yup within living memory they were still being made for serious use in parts of rural Wales, they were a very imporatnt resource which is all but forgotten.

Starting this thread reminded me that i started converting some small 20p carboot pliers into some pocket nips/candle holder. So I got a lad to dig out a suitably sized coin (a old half penny was just right and unlike modern coins doesnt have a steel insert to make it hard to drill and file a hole in it) and clumsily soldered it into place.

With a couple of corks to stop it spiking you when carried removed it can be tapped into the ground or a bit of wood.

It seams to work OK and I will polish the file marks out of it when they start to annoy me.

ATB

Tom

 

[tombear]

By the by has anyone tried dipping candles with pith wicks? Can it be done?

Atb

Tom

 

[Tengu]

I bought a breast of lamb today. (only bit of the beast I can afford...) so there will be fat over.

suitable for rushlights?

 

[tombear]

Yup, it was from bit of roast lamb that I made my first dips. Beef dripping from the supermarket is almost as good, is dirt cheap and comes alredy filtered / cleaned.

Lastnight we lit the shed with the slightly duff ones for 3 or 4 hours, plenty of light for moving abo

Atb

Tom

 

[tombear]

Hi Folks
I'm back from a remarkably sunny Wales and managed to get two trips to St Fagans, one with a couple of hours in the reserve collection with Jnr taking notes as i photographed and measured stuff. The curators were ubber helpful and when i can i will be back to examine all the wooden tinder boxes i didnt have time to document this time.

Anyhoo my main reason for getting down there was to record the tinplate candle and rushlight containers and the gressets they have. I did record 3 wooden tinder boxes (theres lots more) and 3 tin ones and the original sulphur matches they have which has given me new insights which i will bore you with at a later date.

We were delighted to find origianl but desicated by time rushlights in one of the tin candle cases and this and the lack of any other containers in any material more suitable than these contraptions wether in wood or tin were the usual ready to use containers for rushlights and that they were simply cut down to fit. The size of the ones I have so far found vary from 10 to 14.5 inches with by far the most being in the 12 to 13 inch range.

The blacksmith at St Fagans makes excellent copies of at least two types of table nip, one of which is sold in the on site shop for a very reasonable £25. having seen them made we followed him down to the shop and I picked the one I liked most. Sometimes being a kept man is sweet!

Passing Keepers Pond on the wat back to Abergavenny herself found some fine rushes and we brought a few dozen of the fattest ones home which I have processed at her insistance to use with the Welsh. The ones at the top are the best to be saved till last and the ones at the front to use now, having broken or being on the weedy side.

I used a couple of the thinner ones to make wicks, complete with strenghtening strips which made them much easier to handle than the stripless ones I used last time.. Anyway I made a pair of tallow candle with pith wicks to use up some of the left over tallow and beeswax mix. I've been throwing the stubs of candles into the pot as we have been going on and i reckon theres a third raw beeswax in it by now!


ATB

Tom

 

[British Red]

Tom,

Is that the rushlight holder you got from the shop in your photo?

I'd really like to get one and might ask our ouwn Nigel (Launditch1) to see if he can fabricate one.....

I'm interested in your use of beeswax with the tallow (as a hardening agent I assume?). Would that have been done originally? The reason I ask is that I understand beeswax candles were very much a premium product.

If you would like some unprocessed wild type comb to process your own wax, do let me know....thought you might enjoy doing it?

Red

 

[tombear]

Hi Red
yup thats the new toy, the guy also makes a copy of a sprung one that so far he just does as a prop in the buildings there. Compared with others I have seen for sale £25 is very reasonable. I'm sure launditch would make a cracking one, every area had its variation and if you like I can look up a certain locality to see what the type was like there and put up a pic.

As a aside I'm not sure if its done intentionally but the candle holder part isn't welded shut so if you screw in a normal flat ended candle it acts like a pencil sharpener so the bottom ends up tapered to fit. Dipped candles naturally have a taper at the biottom but moulded candles are much easier to make and post medieval whereby far more common as cheap tin moulds and even travelling chandlers started doing the rounds.

The addition of beeswax as a improver (light, smell, smokiness, melting point, easy of storage is well documented back in the day, usually as candle stubs saved from special occaisons or scrounged from richer folk as a perk. traces of tallow and beeswax have been found on candle sticks from Fountains Abbey so they were either mixing it in for summer candles or coating them in beeswax to seal the tallow in. Ive done both and assuming you had access to some beeswax its well worth doing.

By the 19th C they were doing all sorts of weird chemical stuff to harden the tallow, using alum and other such materials. I followed the instructions to do it once and stained a stainless steel pans bottom black. It took several hours with a wire brush on s drill to get it off so I decided not to mess in future. By the time they were commonly playing with this sort of stuff spermacetti candles were taking over from tallow in the UK and its more a frontier American thing. I tend to lose interest after the 1820s and the self consuming cotton wick...

Uw.... comb you say, yes please! :-{D) Something else to learn!

They had some original oat stalk sulphur dips (from Belgium via a local collector rather than made in Wales) and I will be replicating them correctly now I have seen them. I was applying far too much sulphur for it to catch easily.

ATB

TOM

PS they had some nice original Skep , thingies at st Fagans, like a stone chest of drawers misiing the draws, shelves I suppose you call em.