Tow

[Robby]

I got my worms all in order and would like to start cleaning up using Tow. I looked on the web and there seems to be quite a variety. What do you fellows use and where do you get it? If you have an excess, I'll buy some.
Robby

[yulzari]

The easiest and cheapest to find is plumber's hemp for the old fashioned (and best IMHO) pipe thread sealant. It is fine tow. Wet it has cleaned out all the muskets I have owned a treat and dries them well. Washed and carded for reuse it seems eternal. The old boys often bought the reject coarse tow to save money but the fine is cheap and better. Available on line or pop into your local plumber's merchants/DIY shop that does plumbing supplies.

[Pukka Bundook]

Good morning John,

Now, I never thought about plumbing supplies.  Never needed tow, as I brought tow great balls of it with me, but certainly something to look in to!

Ta muchly.

R.

[Robby]

This stuff?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007LQHQD0/ref=dp_olp_0?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Robby

[rich pierce]

I’m thinking that growing flax could be lucrative.

[WadePatton]

Tow is a by-product of the spinners.  Look for the sources where folks are spinning and making their own threads and such.  That's the last place I found a pile for cheap.  I bought a pile on eBay from an individual some years ago.  It's out there.  Also that some say hemp tow is better. 

Flax you can grow yourself, let it dry, beat it up, separate out the fiber---whoot home grown TOW!!!    Hemp might draw attention.


HERE is some flax, which is the "good" part.  Tow is the dregs.  Check this avenue of resources. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LINEN-FLAX-Unbleched-Combed-Top-Felting-Spinning-Cellulose-Vegan-Plant-Fiber-4oz/332594491781?hash=item4d702d3185:g:-ZgAAOSwB-1Y8DBQ:rk:2:pf:0

[WadePatton]

I’m thinking that growing flax could be lucrative.

I'm going to start.  I eat a ton of the seeds, use oil paints, clean with tow.  Could make some threads too.  Bale it and sell it as well.  When I get moved, I'll put some in. Seems quite historically correct to me.   

[Mad Monk]

I’m thinking that growing flax could be lucrative.

Talk to the Canadian crowd here.  Hemp is grown in Canada for cloth and other non-smoking uses.  Well, at least to recently.

Bill K.

[Natureboy]

Townsend's sells 4 oz of flax tow for $5.50, compared to the $6.50 in the attached thread. 4 oz isn't much, if you use it regularly. It is washable, of course. I use hemp oakum that I get from the blacksmiths' stash at Fort Vancouver, primarily as tinder for demonstrating flint and steel. It seems to be a bit messy, though, with loose fibers that might be hard to fully clean from a gun barrel. The flax is really tough, and scours the barrel really well. Just try to tear it apart--a patch knife works better. I use it primarily for scrubbing the face of the breech plug.

[Daryl]

I’m thinking that growing flax could be lucrative.

Talk to the Canadian crowd here.  Hemp is grown in Canada for cloth and other non-smoking uses.  Well, at least to recently.
Bill K.

Likely next summer will see the smoking hemp growing just about everywhere.

[Mad Monk]

I’m thinking that growing flax could be lucrative.

Talk to the Canadian crowd here.  Hemp is grown in Canada for cloth and other non-smoking uses.  Well, at least to recently.
Bill K.

Likely next summer will see the smoking hemp growing just about everywhere.

Daryl,
Permit me a bit  of humor here.
Back when I was looking at historical records on black powder manufacturing I saw where the Spanish were using hemp stem charcoal in sporting powders.  Velocities well above the much vaunted C&H powders.  The punk from the hemp stems was easy to char and grind below 1 micron in particle size.  Now from my work with Elephant, Goex and the Swiss I knew that particular woods give specific smells to the charcoal when used in black powders.  So my buddy in Oz got some "smoking hemp" stalks and charred it.  When fired in the gun the smoke smelled like burning hemp.  So I joked that we could use it in black powder and call ourselves the Cheech and Chong Powder Company.  But with all of the police in the gun club I belonged to you would not want to shoot your ML rifle on that range.
The other joke was that you don't blow down the barrel.  You inhale through it.  Or Bill Clinton does muzzleloading.

Bill K.

[Greg Pennell]

The non-smoking varieties can now be legally grown in Kentucky as well.  Just have to get a license from the state.  It’s supposed to be the next big thing...

Greg

[Daryl]

I’m thinking that growing flax could be lucrative.

Talk to the Canadian crowd here.  Hemp is grown in Canada for cloth and other non-smoking uses.  Well, at least to recently.
Bill K.

Likely next summer will see the smoking hemp growing just about everywhere.

Daryl,
Permit me a bit  of humor here.
Back when I was looking at historical records on black powder manufacturing I saw where the Spanish were using hemp stem charcoal in sporting powders.  Velocities well above the much vaunted C&H powders.  The punk from the hemp stems was easy to char and grind below 1 micron in particle size.  Now from my work with Elephant, Goex and the Swiss I knew that particular woods give specific smells to the charcoal when used in black powders.  So my buddy in Oz got some "smoking hemp" stalks and charred it.  When fired in the gun the smoke smelled like burning hemp. So I joked that we could use it in black powder and call ourselves the Cheech and Chong Powder Company.  But with all of the police in the gun club I belonged to you would not want to shoot your ML rifle on that range.
The other joke was that you don't blow down the barrel.  You inhale through it.  Or Bill Clinton does muzzleloading.
Bill K.

LOL - were the velocities actually higher - really? or just the guys measuring the velocities?

[wattlebuster]

I got mine from these folks.

http://www.paradisefibers.com/spinning/wool-roving/flax-and-hemp.html?gclid=CKfGkeXtsMMCFRAzaQodgn4AdQ

[Mad Monk]

Daryl,

The actual measured velocities with the Spanish hemp stem charcoal were about 100 fps faster than the C&H powder they tested.  That was seen in the papers of Nobel & Abel out of England in the 1860s.

When I read the books on the Spanish Armada and the English ships going in under the guns of the Spanish ships I think the English sailors wanted a cheap high.  A ration of grog and a wiff of Spanish gun smoke.  Spanish cannon smoke dropping down onto the water.

Bill K.

[tiswell]

Robby,
     If you ever get to Ft Frederick, MD in the Spring, there was a lady selling tow this year for a great price. I think it was $5 a hunk and two hunks would fill a shoe box. It was coarse stuff with bits of the stalk.

[smallpatch]

Not sure how we got here, but flax has been a cash crop in the Northern Midwest for years and years.
The oil, the seeds, the fibers are all useable.  Linen, Kleenex, paper are all made from the straw.

[yulzari]

When I read the books on the Spanish Armada and the English ships going in under the guns of the Spanish ships I think the English sailors wanted a cheap high.  A ration of grog and a wiff of Spanish gun smoke.  Spanish cannon smoke dropping down onto the water.

Bill K.

Bill. Good to see you here. The English only managed to keep on firing as they captured a Spanish powder transport early in the campaign so they were also firing Spanish powder otherwise they would have run out.

Any idea why the practice of using hemp stalks died out? Hemp was, and is,  widely available across Europe. The Spanish then were using pit fired charcoal I presume so maybe it was not suited to cylinder firing? In India other lightweight stems were found good too.

John

[yulzari]

Good morning John,

Now, I never thought about plumbing supplies.  Never needed tow, as I brought tow great balls of it with me, but certainly something to look in to!

Ta muchly.

R.

De rien Richard

[stubshaft]

Just do a search of e-bay for Flax Tow.  I just bought some 4 months ago from there for $16.50 a pound.  If I can find the link I will post it.

[WadePatton]

The non-smoking varieties can now be legally grown in Kentucky as well.  Just have to get a license from the state.  It’s supposed to be the next big thing...

Greg

As in TN, but there are regs and you will have un-smart local types who will try to rip some for smoking (and commerce no doubt).  I've also heard rumor than one PD chops some hemp and poses with it every year for "big raid" PR purposes.   Nobody ever gets charged.  The confusion and idiocy will continue for quite a while.

Just the flax here ma'am.

[Dan Fruth]

Log cabin sport shop in Lodi Ohio is a good source. Liza sells a lunch bag full of tow for $6.00, and its enough to last almost a lifetime.............https://www.logcabinshop.com/..............I don't see it listed on their website, so you will have to call.

[Maven]

Also try, Silver Shuttle/Susan Wallace of Memphis, TN:  Silver Shuttle | Memphis | Tennessee | Sewings
https://www.sewings.us/company-silver-shuttle-in-memphis-tn-32602
Susan Wallace the Owner of Silver Shuttle, the Yarn-Retail in 2547 Madison Ave, the Memphis, the Tennessee 38112.

[Robby]

Thank all of you, really good info here!!!!
Robby

[Mike Lyons]

What’s the benefit of using tow instead of running a few patches down the barrel?