Mainstream gear in fact more accurate? (Answer: NO)

[stx]

Let me first start off by saying this is in no way a shot at the approved vendors or an endorsment of farbism

Over the last couple of weeks I've been doing a reserch paper on corrupt union contractors during the civil war. Many of you may have seen my request for sources, which proved to be very helpful. Through my research, using such books as The Organization and Administration of the Union army and various harpers weekly magazines, I found the quality of thousands of articles of clothing and equiptment to be of poor quality. This included inferior material, incorrect patterns, and overall shody construction (sounds a lot like some mainstream gear, doesn't it?). With this in mind, I have this proposal: would it not in fact be accurate, maybe even more accurate, to have a great portion of reenactors wearing incorrect clothing? Sure the items of the approved vendors or great, and I hope to own some of their clothing in the future, but would the clothing of the average soldier, who many times was given the most deplorable clothing of corrupt vendors, really last for years and years like those of the approved vendors? All of this of course is taking into account the great wear and tear they would have suffered during the course of the war.

Just food for thought.

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

Which do you mean:

"Incorrect" clothing for the 1860's or "incorrect" clothing for 2007?

I don't think people in the 1860s wore polyester.

-Johnny Lloyd

[mslaird]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

Well, since someone opened this up, I guess I will ask my questions, too. (Not to change the subject of the thread in any way because I too am interested in the answers that will be forthcoming)

I have studied the 19th Century very intently for most of my academic life but I have always bowed to those who possess more knowledge about a subject than I have. Being relatively new to participating in re enacting and living history and limiting my purchases to the folks that I know through reading countless threads provide good quality reproductions, I wanted to know which of the bigger "mainstream" sutlers still have quality gear?

I know many of them started out small scale as some of the approved vendors on this forum are now and that many of them were dedicated to accuracy in thier day. What happened? Do any of them still adhere to thier old standards with at least some of thier products?

I think I have read just about every thread concerning this and I have used the search function to a considerable extent. With all of these hours of reading, which I have enjoyed greatly, I still have those questions.

Thanks all.

[stx]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

The gear I'm describing is more mainstream than farb. I'm not saying go to your local costumes shop kind of stuff, but more stuff you'd get at sutler row. This stuff does, for the most part, use period materials, just of poorer quality and not to the regulations that the government, and approved sutlers, followed.

[D F Smith Historic]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

Hi All,

A long while back I looked into this very thing. Looking into making some of the common contractor items that were shoddy. As weird as it may seem, It is more expensive to copy a period shoddy original item than an original that was of good quality.

Case in pont, the overcoats that were made out of shoddy felt or flannel. Just getting a mill to make this materiel is an expensive, if not almost impossible task. Due to th elow amount of probbable sales of the item , combined with the minimum amount of cloth required to purchase (1,000 -5,000 or so + yards) the cost for the coat would not be worth making or purchasing due to the high expense.

There are some of the original shoddy items that could be reproduced that wouldn't be too bad on price, although they would be more appropriate for display than use. Like painted cloth coverd past board core cartridge boxes or knapsacks. These can be made. But just like their ancestors, whould not last long ( maybe a year of reenacting)

All the best

Don S

[stx]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

My thoughts are this shody gear is already available from some mainstream sutlers.

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

How about the Nick ************ US Infantry 5lb. blanket? The reason why the one I ordered from him is so good is that it's shoddy like the originals were.

Purposefully-made "shoddy goods" repros are a sign that the vendor making them knows their craft very well... Well-enough to know the difference between a well-made original and a poorly-made one.

Few "skinner row" types know how to do this fine art- much unlike approved vendors.

-Johnny

PS- The minute most of the participants use the excuse at a quality event to knowingly use mainstream goods as "shoddy" is the beginning of the end of the authentic/progressive movement. I could just see the reaction to that one... ugh.

[Spinster]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

Tim.

I looked up to see if you had put this thread in the Sinks. You did not. So----No.

Lets look at one small aspect--the incorporation of a certain percentage of 'shoddy' allowed by contract into the fabric. Shoddy was simply short wool fibers---or occassionally other period NATURAL fibers remanufactured back into yarn and rewoven into cloth.

Folks who watched me reel wool yarn at Fort Gaines this weekend were conscious of the amount of fibers that went flying through the air--in a mill setting, those would have been swept up and reused.

About a decade ago, I did a run of yarn with a significant amount of 'shoddy' in it. Just getting the spinnery to incorporate only wool sweepings was a challenge. Frankly, I'm still not positive we got it right. That yarn was a nightmare to beam, and made a poor shed that slowed my weaving rate considerably. When I finally got that run of scarves off the loom and washed them, the draw up was amazing--more than 30 %.

Somewhere in the hobby there are about a dozen fellers with grey wool twill scarves with tiny red and blue flecks of shoddy in them. They paid a decent price for those scarves, but I had about twice that time in them.

Somewhere I've still got some of that yarn. When it comes to the top in my stash, I may set it alight to avoid the temptation to warp a loom with it again. The results were glorius, the process a nightmare.

Copying period manufacturing practices is hard and expensive, not easy and cheap.

[fahtz]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

The period manufactures used period materials and techniques. Modern sutler row vendors use 2007 often only partially natural fibers. Did the "shoddy" or poor contractors use fabrics that contained only a fraction of natural fibers? No. Did the contractors during the war period use 1990's singer sewing machines to top stitch that federal blouse? Nope... I think the difference here is the material and construction techniques the contractors used back in the day are only observed by the authentic makers of goods today. Few if any average sutler row vendors could tell you the techniques used in constructing an original civil war garment. The authentic vendors spend hours documenting the techniques used in even the poorest of surviving original.

[Dan Wambaugh]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

Tim,

Here's something I wrote this summer in a similar discussion:

"One thing to bear in mind is that there is a difference between clothing put together by competent people who are pressed for time and need to turn things out rapidly to fill a pressing national need, and someone who has no idea what he is doing and is trying to make a quick buck and uses the "shoddy goods" argument to justify something that is honestly just a piece of garbage. All too often in our hobby the latter is the case much more common than the former.

A individual wishing to replicate period shoddy practices in construction must first spend years studying originals, and perfecting GOOD manufacturing skills. You have have to crawl before you can walk.

Another thing to bear in mind is that in my experience, a garment that exhibits shoddy or hasty overall construction still will often have superb buttonholes, far superior to what is commonly passed off today. Whether or not the assembly of said garments was done by a different person than the buttonholes is nearly impossible to tell.

A distinction should be made however, between intentionally shoddy contractor goods (felt blankets, logwood dyed sack coats) and shoddy work necessitated by need to turn things out to meet an emergency (low stitch counts, uneven workmanship) or local availability of material. These are two different animals, one with its roots in greed, and the other in need.

The bottom line is that yes, there is a need for shoddy goods in the community today, but it has to be done by someone who knows what they're doing, and not someone who simply wants to turn a buck and should probably spend another few years practicing their stitching."


That being said, there is also a monumental difference between "period shoddy" and "unauthentic." Above I have named a couple of instances of period items that would be considered shoddy by the soldiers, but in no period accounts do you see soldiers giving something like the following quote:


"Today I was issued a new sack coat. It is a shoddy affair made of purple wool cloth that was obviously intended for a blanket. Furthermore every last bit of it was machine sewn including the buttonholes. It is far heavier than any of sack coats I have ever worn and in the afternoon drill I was prostrated from heat stroke."


Now of course a quote like that is absurd, aside from the soldiers not caring about the little details we hold so dear, there just wasn't anything like what we see in mainstream sutler's tents used during the war. If you use incorrect materials (meaning the wrong color, weight, and weave), the incorrect patterns (something altered from a pajama top) and construction (sewing everything, even buttonholes out on a sewing machine) then you aren't being shoddy, you're being unauthentic.

Forgive me if it seems that I've become bogged down in semantics, but it is very important now and forever to make the distinction between what they would have thought as low quality then, and what we as historical interpreters think of low quality now. They are two very different animals. The bottom line is that mainstream gear, uniforms, leather goods, etc, etc, is not acceptable for someone wishing to accurately portray a soldier. For the most part it is made overseas from the cheapest materials with the aim toward saving money, nothing more.

So to answer your question, no, it would not be more accurate. :)


Best Regards,

[stx]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

So if I'm understaning correctly, the common consensus is that even though mainstream gear is shody and shody goods were produced during the war, the mainstream gear still isn't made in the same fasion as those shody goods? When they don't compare even to the shody gear it makes them sound all that worse. Interesting.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

There's more than authentic materials in contruction of a reproduction garment - authentic reprocution also includes equal attention to the methods and patterns.

[Garrett Silliman]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

So if I'm understaning correctly, the common consensus is that even though mainstream gear is shody and shody goods were produced during the war, the mainstream gear still isn't made in the same fasion as those shody goods? When they don't compare even to the shody gear it makes them sound all that worse. Interesting.

As shody is a period term I wouldn't even go so far as to say mainstream gear is shoddy - let's just call it crappy. It rimes and I think we all know what it means. Dan's post pretty much said it all: there is a place for period correct shoddy goods, but just because something's bad doesn't make it good.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

Hallo!

The Gold Standard, IMHO, for reproduction clothing and gear, is how much of the "Triad" is present in:

1. Period raw materials
2. Period patterns, forms, and models
3. Period methods or technology of construction

Meaning, the Civil War concept of "shoddy" is not the same as using the word (denotation and connotation) today to excuse or overlook materials, patterns, and methods of construction that are decidely "Modern" and not "Period."
Otherwise, when everything "Modern" is possible, little or nothing can tend to be "Period."

Or better yet perhaps, IMHO, in some segments of the CW Community.... one should perhaps not take 22 ounce 50/50 nylon/wool blend and make a blouse by using an old Nehru jacket pattern on mom's modern sewing machine and justify it by calling it "shoddy."

Others' mileage will vary...

Curt

[Hank Trent]

Re: Mainstream gear in fact more accurate?

So if I'm understaning correctly, the common consensus is that even though mainstream gear is shody and shody goods were produced during the war, the mainstream gear still isn't made in the same fasion as those shody goods? When they don't compare even to the shody gear it makes them sound all that worse. Interesting.

Not necessarily. What's "better" or "worse" can only be determined after you define the goal.

If the goal is practicality and durability, a cheap reproduction might be "better" than an original, because what's cheap today is still often "better," in that sense, than anything available in the 1860s. Polyester won't rot; plastic won't tarnish or leak; stainless steel won't rust.

If the goal is to duplicate an original, a whole different set of standards are applied, and "better" has a completely different meaning.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net