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Last of the Mohicans

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Rick Son

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In the movie Last of the Mohicans (i know)he uses that silk for patch material,true thing,any better.or just movie stuff.
 
I always thought that Hawkeye wanted the silk from Cora's petticoat just to get a glimpse of her ankles. Don't bother with silk for patching. Sounded good for the movie but no basis in muzzleloader performance.
 
Your thinkin Petticoat Junction :surrender: Got my wife some silkies for xmas,but at my age it looks like it is gonna be patch material :(
 
I think ole Hawkeye was one of the first fellows to want to save the world from litter.

With this in mind, he started spreading the rumor that silk was good for patching a muzzleloader.

What he wasn't telling folks was that the flame from the burning powder vaporizes silk so little of the shot patch will remain to litter up the forest floor.

Course, if the other shooters started using silk like he was suggesting it also helped him win the rifle matches he shot against them. Vaporized patches produce some really crummy accuracy.

Back in those days, winning a shooting match often would provide some good eats for a while.
 
I think for some centuries before silk was made in Europe before the F/I war. It was still awfully expensive. I don't know if raw silk would work or not.
 
I don't think it was in the book, Last of the Mohicans, but it might have been in one of the other five Leatherstocking Tales series... Possibly The Deerslayer or The Pathfinder (not in The Pioneers or The Prairie). And I seem to recall the scene in the movie where he bums the silk but its when Cora is doing laundry or something -- very unsexy.

Good movie. NOTHING like the book except in vague similarities in most respects.
 
The book and the movie are different stories . It's Hollywood, lucky they had muzzle loaders and not 45/70s with flintlock looking things on the side.
 
Ah, and Cora's underwear came off then did it? To be used as a bandage!? Maybe that is sexy but not especially hygienic -- especially back then.

Well, Hawkeye did say something about getting some yards better range for his rifle later using silk as they were picking off Mingos for the messenger(s) to get away.

None of the scenes at the fort, maybe 1/3rd of the movie, except for Montcalm meeting with Magua and the parlay, are in the book.

The guy who made Hawkeye's rifle for the film charges between $10,000 and $25,000 for his guns today I seem to recall. I presume he doesn't actually sell many if any. Maybe John Milius bought one when Hollywood was still letting him work...
 
First of all, I don't really believe even the daughters of a military Colonel would be wearing silk, even for petticoats...personal opinion only.

Second, look though I might, I've never found any of Cooper's characters saying, "...because the French haven't the nature for war...their Latin voluptuousness combined with their Gaulic laziness, and the result is, they'd rather eat and make love with their faces than fight."!

Yep, the movie follows the book all right!!???!???
And I'm the Queen of France!
 
I have a dark gray/brown 1700's pullover shirt made out of raw silk.It seems to be a very tough material, and not slick at all; as a matter of fact, I would not have known it was anything but somewhat fine-textured cotton if the custom maker had not told me different. The reason I bought it was because I was told it would be a little cooler to wear in hot weather, and there does seem to be a little truth to this.It might even make a good patch material.But I say this realizing that whoever wrote this line in the script probably had no knowledge of raw silk-or whether any type of silk would work for this application.Might be a subject for a future experiment using the rough silk however. Sincerely, Smoothshooter
 
Raw silk is cooler in the summer & warmer as an undergarment in the winter than cotton, polypropyalene or most ordinary wools.
(I hunt in ALL SILK tops/drawers in the colder days.)

The US Army's Cold Maneuver Studies Group says that only "waterfowl down" is as warm when wet. - Down is BULKY & most such garments are SLOW to dry, once wet.

yours, satx
 
I THINK there was a scene in the 1920 version of Last of the Mohicans where the SECONDARY character of Hawkeye, who looks like Jim Carey in Dumb & Dumber, takes some silk but it IS a silent film, so...

No mention of it in the 1936 black & white version.
 
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