[Ansteorra] Rush lights

[Stefan li Rous]

On Jul 10, 2010, at 2:14 PM, willowdewisp at juno.com wrote:

> This was the file that go me interested but I am not good enough with plants to recognize the plants and was hoping for a human being to show me the plant.
> willow


Ah, okay. I'm not very good at plant identification myself. Even with pictures. It gave me a real problem in the Boy Scouts. 

I'm not even sure it grows down here, which is why I quoted the section about where it usually grows. I also quoted the section saying that while there is one preferable plant, even in period they often just used what they had. So if you can find a picture of the specified plant, you might be able to find something that is close looking to it and try that. It didn't sound like it had to be that specific plant; that was just one that worked well.

The comment on trying rattan was only half a joke. Some scraps should be available from folks in the SCA and it is a reedy plant and unless it is some sort of oil in the plant that makes a big difference, I think it would be worth a try. And while not period, paraffin might be that much better than tallow to be worth an initial try and it might overcome the substandard quality of the rattan.

I have yet to even try to process fat into tallow, although I've considered trying it for tallow candles. Hey, anyone can make beeswax candles and lots of people have. :-)   Might get thrown out if I tried to use them in a feast hall, though.  Anyone know a cheap source of sheep fat? Sheep meat tends to rather expensive here. Do *not* use pork fat for tallow. Even period documents say not to do that.

Stefan

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****