michaelsbagley

Actually, Doctor Misson's intention to attend is another notch in favour of us Souris attending, as is Mr. Dogge's coming. In fact, my thoughts were, if Mr. Misson and Mr. Dogge were so inclined, a car pool of the lot of us would be great! Kate has some vacation time due to her around that time, so travel times and days are pretty flexible for us. In fact, as we had to cancel our vacation, any arrangements that could maximize our time in Beaufort (French for "handsome strong") would suit us rather well.

Personally I think it is a brilliant idea as well. Keeping this to less than a half day, or just a couple of hours would probably be as Misson said the most ideal situation... I also like the idea of setting things up before a battle, then funnelling people over after the battle, it allows for maximum exposure so those who do volunteer displays or time will feel like they have an audience. Dutch has a lot of good suggestions in his post... And a suggestion which his advice suggests but doesn't come out and say, is that for those just getting started, focus on a very specific aspect of what you will be displaying, beign a good "generalist" takes time, realistically many months if not years. So if you have aspirations of doing a living history display (or whatever term is used) it is better to overspecialize than to try and explain all aspects of a certain trade. It's too bad Dutch deleted his first post, there were some really good definitions in there... Now I understand there is a great deal of differences of opinions on the use of those terms, but regardless of the terms used, he did explain the concepts well. The only thing I have to say is Blacksmithing may not be a good addition to this. It tends to be a slow tedious task, with almost no immediate visual end results. So with blacksmithing, it tends to be turn into one of two things, either a static display of the tools, or a smith working the forge and not doing much talking. Now it is possible for a few people to work together to balance the best of both worlds on this... But in my observations, blacksmithing tends to work best as an ongoing demonstration rather than a focussed Living History display in a time slot. That's my two cents on the matter anyways.

Outside of the date (which I am unsure of), and following the various "how much to charge (or not)" threads (like this thread) on a few different forums.... I haven't heard anything serious about this one. I even did a google search, and all I found was a blog reference, and links to some of the threads on some of the forums it was discussed on last year. I would like to know more if any more information is had, but the best I can infer from what I have read is, that expect all the same stuff as last year (whatever last year entailed), and probably most of the same attendees (give or take a few)... Maybe one of the Archangels or Great Lakes River Pirates could shed some light on how it was last year, and perhaps if they have any information about this year that can be shared.

Bump... Well, it seems like this year is going to involve me taking a break from Pennsic... And since going to Pennsic was the only thing that was going to keep me away from this event, it seems that Kate and I are likely to be going. Looking forward to hearing more about this event as HistoryFanatic gets things organized. If all goes well, this event may see the debut of my Red Coat uniform... This event is happenning the weekend of August 9th and 10th as far as I know, but someone please do correct me if I am wrong.

Please do Mission...you are quite welcome to do so... Both Kate and I are okay with you using any of the photos from her camera.

Ya know cheeky.... Lob is generally a fairly unlucky monkey... That kiss is probably the only "good" thing that has ever happenned to him!

There is just too much to say about this event... Here are some more pics which will hopefully speak to some of what I am thinking... Photos of the 08 Hampton Blackbeard Festival on Photobucket Or for those who prefer the Photobucket slideshow style view

I've got both our camcorder and digitalo camera charging up right now. They should both have a good solid charge by the time we leave tomorrow. Now if I only had a street address or a specific park name so I could mapquest exactly where we are supposed to be going rather than just the town of Hampton...

Bump... After playing around with this for the last few weeks, I have finally made a couple of prototypes of my own version of the Whydah shot pouch. I'm also going to start taking orders in case there is anyone interested. There are a few differences between what I came up with and Capt. Midnight's version... Below are some pics of the first two I made. I will be offering them in natural leather, brown, and black. I will be asking $40 fot the natural leather, the black or brown will be $45. Shown below are the natural and the brown. I will consider other colours if there is serious interest (more than three people). Shipping is not included, and I won't begin full production until after I get back from the Hampton Blackbeard festival at the end of the month. Please EMAIL meif you are interested... You can click on the EMAIL button at the bottom of this post, or enter michael AT re-enactmentevents DOT com straight into your email program. IMPORTANT!!! My PM box is almost full from stored messages, so please DO NOT PM ME as there is a good chance I will not get the message. Back to the pouch, it is made from natural veg tan leather, hand sewn with heavy hemp thread, and the box is made from bass wood. The dimensions are approx 6 inches wide (15 cm), 2.5 inches thick (6.5 cm), and about 3.75 inches tall (9.5 cm). It will fit onto a 2 inch wide belt (and it is stiff yo get it onto a 2 inch wide belt, or (and I am guessing here) a 1.75 inch baldric. And now onto the pics... For more pics, visit these links.... Natural Coloured Shot Pouch inside Another pic of the natural cooured pouch Back of the brown shot pouch Inside of the brown shot pouch Please post any general questions here... Hope some are interested in this..

Are you thinking of the Gunnister Man? Gunnister Man archeological survey The details of the coins are on page 10... For anyone who is interested in 1690s garb, there is some realy awesome deails about the garb and accoutrements this gent was carried in the article... Aother thing that caught my attention was the fact he was carrying a horn spoon. I had always wondered if they were actually correct for this period or just a "re-enactorism".

Going partially from memory, most of the coins found on the Whydah were peices of eight (Spanish gold and silver, and mostly silver). Checking through my copy of "Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah" (which is the exhibit coffee table book), I found that one of the coins was marked with a "53" which the author claims means the coin was minted in 1653. Reading a bit further, there is mention of some French coins dated to 1690, and various English coins dated to the 1690 to 1710 range... So, reasonably speaking, since the Whydah went down in 1717, I think have mostly coins from within 20 to 30 years of your target date would be okay, and having the rare coin up to about 50 or 60 years old would not be unreasonable. Of course this is based solely on one find... Until more information is published about other pirate ships, this is probably the best info available to us. Hope this helps. Maybe if I get tired from working on projects I will dig out my copy of "Expedition Whydah" and see if it has any more detailed information on the topic... The "Real Pirates..." book is more of a picture book, while the "Expedition..." book is more text oriented and as such would probably have better information on the topic. P.S. I just realized this was my 500th post! I am now a "Pyrate Captain"!

Hey Consance/Pax, In reading yuour last post, a thought came up.... You might want to read this old thread on buttons/shirt closures. Shirt Closures, how to close the sleeves and neck It does provide some interesting insight on the topic..

That's a bloody brilliant citation Misson!

After almost a year of putting this off an poking away at it now and then, I have finally finished my hand sewn tarp tent setup. The below pictures are from the test setup that Jessica and I did tonight. We did not put in all the stakes or pull the tension as perfect as we would for a proper setup, so it is saging in these pics more than it would in actual use. It is roughly about 13 feet square, made from the heavy weight fustian available from Hamliton Dry Goods, sewn with the heavy hemp thread from Reconstructing History. The eyelets are all hand sewn. I've used rope loop through eyelets to hold the stakes. All the seams are flat-felled and about 3/4 inch wide. I even divided the lengths of canvas into two so it would appear to be made from period width canvas (just over two foot wide widths). About 20 hours (give or take) went into sewing the seams, and about another 10 hours (give or take) went into the hand sewing the eyelets. These times were spread out over several weeks. I made the pole segmented so it will fit in a smaller vehicle for easier transport. I used inch and a quarter dowel, and a eight inch long segment of one inch (inner diameter) pipe to join the two lengths of dowel. I also added a pin to the top of the pole to fit into an eyelet to better hold the canvas in place. A close up of the pole Another angled view Side view

Let me take a stab at this...Christmas? That would be ironic... But I actually think late spring (like right now) is the time recommended for harvesting in the sources I have read.... But of course I don't have the time right now to do any brewing... Nor do I think I can find a decent and unpoluted (not near a highway or factory) source of spruce in central Ohio... They were much easier to find when I lived in Ontario.

I've heard that spruce ale is pretty good... Apparently that is what I have heard form the War of 1812 re-enactors I used to run with that have drunk it. I've always wanted to give making it a go... But I can never find spruce when I need it... or when I have a source, I forget what season it is best to harvest needles in... I think I am just not meant to try it.

Not to be a smart alec... but a US Gallon is closer to 3.8 litres than 4 1/2 litres... 4 1/2 might be correct for Imperal gallons though, you would have to double check that with someone from the land of Eng though.

Ahoy back... There are two different opinions on "looted clothing" for pirates. As far as decor goes, maybe Mary Diamond or Sterling will pipe in as they know far more about the style and hows of decorating shirts for the era... But as for fancy shirts and looted clothing... Some are of the opinion that pirates would have constantly upgraded their clothing pillaging what they wanted.... Others are more of the opinion that pirates were sailors, and remained so after turning to a life of crime, and wouldn't have bothered with fancy clothes as being too impractical at sea... If you dig through the archives of the Captain's Twill section, there are several debates, some freindly, some rather impassioned... But I have yet to see any real definative solid evidence for either side of that debate... Although from what I have seen, I tend to lean far more to the basic no-frills clothing, and in my opinion, in reading through those threads, there does seem to be more evidence to support more working class clothing for pirates than fancy gentle-folks clothing.... People tend to get their hackles up when stuff like this is said... But honestly there are FAR TOO MANY officers, captains and fancy pirates out there.... The hobby is in very bad need of actually crewmen... But that is just my humble opinion. Now back to more specifically addressing your questions... Shirts do fit and hang differently than modern shirts, and they do tend to pull in strange directions. Chalk that up to partially different postures and builds as Sterling mentioned in the post on the other thread of questions you asked. And partly, the design is just meant to hang differently. They are undergarments, whereas modern shirts are meant more as outer wear. Generally speaking, the waistcoat (whether sleeved or vest-style) tend to be the main outer layer for display covering the shirt for the most part. Hope this helps.

Hey Rumba, Use the "email" function rather than the "PM" function. Mary Diamond rarely responds to "PM"s which is why she specifies to "email" her in all business transactions... Hope this helps.

That is an extremely cool database. Yeppers.. I love the information found on that site... The dictionary part is great... But there is also sections containing letters and other official government documents... Most are from later periods, but there is a fair amount of good primary source documentation from the GAoP as well. In fact a good amount of my research for Red Coats in the colonies came from that site (not to try and get this thread off topic, I'll be posting more on the "Uniform Colours" (Red Coat) thread when I find more time to work on that)...

This is in a small way to help Rumba... But also out of self interest... Hey Mary!!! Do you still have any of those buttons for sale? I am thinking I would like another batch or two... And perhaps Rumba may consider them too if the look like they will suit her needs.

It would take some serious research in a good library (as in your not too likely to find this online).. But if you could find some archives of shipping inventories, that would be the best way to find out what they ate. A detailed search of the British Dictionary of Trade Goods would probably turn up lots of good information... I know there have been some ship inventory listings posted over the years in Twill... I just did a quick search and wasn't able to find anything right off the bat... But if you tried a more detailed search and some different keyword or phrase searches, you might have better luck than me.

Mr. Monet (and any others paying attention) .... The reason the threads are not visible and seem "archived" is that when you view a list of threads, if you scroll down to the bottom of the list, there are a few drop boxes. One of these drop boxes will have "the last 90 days" in it. Which is a filter that cause ONLY the last 90 days of topics to display. If you change that drop box to "the beginning", then all threads will show up. Of course there will be more topics/threads than can be displayed on one screen, so some numbers will appear on the lower left hand side of the list of threads/topics. That list if numbers are page numbers, you can page through the lists of topics/threads using those numbers. About the "use the search" thing... I've seen some people get a little perhaps overenthusiastic about encouraging the use of the search function... But I've yet to see anyone be outright rude about it. Another perhaps unspoken reason for the common "Use the search function" response, is not for being lazy by the respondant, but it is an attempt to encourage people to read what has already been posted, and ADD TO EXISTING threads for a topic. So for example, lets say someone asks about "whoozawhatsits"... The response they get is "use the search".. Then said inquiring individual, uses the search, and then reads existing info and still does not get the info on "whozawhatsits"... The idea is to add further questions to the existing old threads in HOPES that months/years down the road when the next person asks about "whozawhatsits" the information will hopefully be more cohesive. There have been a few individuals (and I will not name names), that have persisted in having their own thread, even going so far as to pointedly ignore information provided with links to old threads, because the response was not given in "their thread". While this forum is for everyone, and if that is how they want to be, then fine.... But for most people, the preference is to try to keep like information together, and the "use the search" is only a brief way of saying this rather than the three paragraph response I have just typed explaining why we prefer to encourage the use of the "search" function rather than typing the same answers over and over again before getting to the specific nuance the individual may be looking for. I hope this better explains the "use the search function" response... It is NOT meant to be rude or dismissive, it is only an attempt to make the questions easier to answer and to keep like information cohesive for future reference, specially on topics that get brought up frequently, infrequently, or even rarely. Because to be honest, there is enough information here for a VERY detailed pirate wikipedia, but because much of the information isn't easy to find, the information stored here isn't being used anywhere near as effectively as it could. P.S. The above explanation is pretty much only in reference to the "Captain's Twill" area... As most of the other areas are more social, it is probably irrelevant for those areas. Although this might work to a lesser degree for "Plunder" as well...

Well Mr. Monet... This Place seems to carry period glasses.... I would call to see if they do perscription (but it seems as though they might)... Jas Townsend has glasses althogh you will likely have to buy the frames from Jas Townsend, and have custom made perscription lenses made by your local optometrist... It seems G. Gedney Godwin (Sutler of Moutn Misery) carries the glasses as well, but again, you will likely have to have new lenses made by your local optometrist... For more information check these threads out... Eye Glasses during the GAoP What kind of Glasses are appropriate for GAoP?

You're most welcome, but just about everyone on this forum deserves more credit and your thanks than I do... Most of that information is a result of other peoples research and time... I am just a good indexing system to remember other peoples researches... I would recommend cotton canvas for the kids... and don't even spend the money on period canvas (hemp or linen, cotton canvas was really more of a 19th century thing), they will wear through and outgrow things, so spending the extra money on the high end stuff wouldn't be worth it (in my opinion). ALTHOUGH, for just a little more money than cotton canvas, you can get Fustian canvas (50/50 cotton/linen) which looks almost exactly like pure linen canvas... I have used the BNH-602 from Period Fabrics for a few projects (including a hand sewn tarp shelter)... Because I spent the extra money on commercial patterns, I just cut out paper patterns in the appropriate size, and went with that... I don't have the patience (and perhaps skills) for scaling period patterns... But I would guess making cheap mock-ups out of muslin would be a good idea... I preshrink my linens, but not wool. I do pre-wash wool and then HANG TO DRY, which does sometimes shrink the wool slightly... But never, ever, EVER put wool in the dryer. I will take some pictures of my breeches as well when I can get to it later this weekend. Seriously, you owe me nothing... All I have done is spent a few minutes here and there answering your questions with the same information many of the folks that have been around this forum longer than I have shared with me when I was learning (and I am still learning)... Sure, please do translare "Pax et oro"... Although, isn't "oro"="gold"? So wouldn't it be "something" of gold?