Posted on 05/16/2007 2:33:57 PM PDT by dynachrome
Test your Jamestown 1607 survival skills: You are a colonist facing winter and need to patch your coat. Besides needle and thread, you need this to wax the thread to make sewing the coat easier:
Candle wax
Fish oil
Ear wax
(Excerpt) Read more at hamptonroads.com ...
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I didn’t get this one.
I got that one wrong but so did the majority of respondents.
I was grossed out myself!
Yay, I got it. I figured they wouldn’t have access to candles and fish oil seemed pretty weird to have...
The easiest and most accessible thing to have anywhere...ear wax.
Fish oil would have been used for much more important items; cooking, various sicknesses, maybe lanterns, etc.
My guess there was no candle wax at all. I believe that candles were made with suite(sp) (animal fat). I have read that when wax was around it would be smeared on light colored fabrics or light skins which would make them somewhat translucent, so they could put them in cuts outs (windows of sorts) in their dwellings to allow more natural light. I think they had to be careful about how many windows because they were taxed if they had to many. (Not every community taxed windows.)
Ya do whacha gotta do, right?
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