Mythbusters Hair Myth

[lynlora]

Was watching the Mythbusters show tonight and one of the myths was climbing down a rope made out of sheets,tissue paper and human hair.For the hair one Kari weaved together about 50 ponytails.She made three short ropes and then weaved all them together.Then tied each section into one long rope. Climbed down from a roof 140 feet up and the hair rope actually held !!!!

(Edited because of the wrong name)

[Addy]

Drats, I decided to watch Dog The Bounty Hunter instead.

Should have watched MythBusters. It's a good show.

[Juneii]

that's a bit gross, climbing down roofs by a rope of dead skin cells, but yes, our hair is quite strong when used together :]

[Fairlight63]

Thats an interesting program. Wish that I had seen it.
Reminds me of when my daughter had long hair & strands of her hair would get wrapped around the brush of my vacuum cleaner the strands of hair would get REALLY STRONG almost like a rope.

[wintersun99]

.............

[Sashay]

Wow, I missed that one. I would have liked to see that, but I believe it!

[andber]

If you google on "Man pulls train with ponytail" you'll find several videos about a man in India with a ponytail (not so long thou) who pulls a train with it. Human hair surely is strong when there are many hairstrands together!! Even a single strand can be quite strong!

Here's a task for anybody who would like to join in :) Take one of your hairs that has fallen off. Tie a loop/knot in one of the ends and try to lift different things with the hair strand. What is the heaviest the hair can take?

[A'eorryn]

If I'm remembering correctly, the average strand of human hair is stronger than a piece of steel wire of the same thickness. My grandma has hair like fishline (no joke, I can't break a strand of her hair to save my life, it slips out of my fingers before it'll snap!) at age 75, and though my own hair was nice and fine when I was young, after 15 years of having barely any now that it's growing out I see that mine is just like hers - though to a lesser degree, so maybe it will get progressively fishliney as I age. It means it isn't terribly 'soft' (my ends could take your eye out! :p), but it sure is nice for bulk :)

~A'eorryn

[Solange]

I saw that one. Mythbusters is one of the few shows I make a point to watch. It was Kari, not Tori, actually, but she did find working with the hair unappealing, lol. Handling lots of ratty hair from other people's heads would be very different than styling silky combed hair still attached to a person, lol.

[DelynofRhondda]

I would believe this theory. One day for giggles, I took seven strands of hair, spun them together, and (this is the giggles part ...)

Replaced the high "d" string on my Gothic Bray Harp. The string came up to tune and held during a 45-min. practice. It probably would have been playable longer. It showed no ware from the finger-nails, peg or pin. Just a slight crimp where it had been held into the soundboard. Even the end wrapped around the tuning peg smoothed out.

I was curious about tinsel strength after reading different "historical" stringing materials. Also chose that particular string as I didn't know what pull it would have on the soundboard. One of these days I may try the entire upper octave with various count strands. (Lower octaves I don't have enough length for ... yet.)

[berr]

They probably bought the hair from locks of love. :mad:


The tensil properties of hair have been known for a long time. Women used to collect and save the hair from their brushes and combs and use the spinning wheel to make twine from the collected hair. I'd almost bet money they didn't need the rope to be very thick. It doesn't take much hair at all to demolish the beater bar on a vacuum.

[Drynwhyl]

I can have a normal-sized cat climb on my 1,5cm thick dreadlock without hurting my scalp :D
I guess tight dreads are even stronger than hair in strands.

[JamieLeigh]

Human hair MUST be pretty strong...I have 5 kids who have all walked and tugged on it for the past few years, and yet I still have 40+" of hair. Amazing, I'd say. ;)

[Euphony]

Was watching the Mythbusters show tonight and one of the myths was climbing down a rope made out of sheets,tissue paper and human hair.For the hair one Kari weaved together about 50 ponytails.She made three short ropes and then weaved all them together.Then tied each section into one long rope. Climbed down from a roof 140 feet up and the hair rope actually held !!!!

(Edited because of the wrong name)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that's what my husband was talking about. I was trying to do our taxes and Mythbusters was on, apparently hubby watched it...I thought I was paying better attention to it than that :D

[Norwegian_Metal]

Yea hair is super strong together like that. Some tribes used to weave shields and stuff out of hair.

[wooliswonderful]

Reviving this as I just saw the episode on DVD.
As I was watching I was thinking she could have spun the hair together and made a stronger rope, but her braid turned out ok. I probably would have spun, plied, knitted incredibly long icordx2 & plied those together. :)

[lapispimpernel]

As I was watching I was thinking she could have spun the hair together and made a stronger rope, but her braid turned out ok. I probably would have spun, plied, knitted incredibly long icordx2 & plied those together. :)

...wooliswonderful, threadcraft has clearly warped your mind. :D

I got all excited about DelynofRhondda's harp experiment before realizing this thread is a couple years old. Oh well. The episode is pretty cool, & I'd like to see it again. Maybe youtube.

**off to check wool stash!**

[metricfuture]

I would believe this theory. One day for giggles, I took seven strands of hair, spun them together, and (this is the giggles part ...)

Replaced the high "d" string on my Gothic Bray Harp. The string came up to tune and held during a 45-min. practice. It probably would have been playable longer. It showed no ware from the finger-nails, peg or pin. Just a slight crimp where it had been held into the soundboard. Even the end wrapped around the tuning peg smoothed out.

I was curious about tinsel strength after reading different "historical" stringing materials. Also chose that particular string as I didn't know what pull it would have on the soundboard. One of these days I may try the entire upper octave with various count strands. (Lower octaves I don't have enough length for ... yet.)

Thanks to your post, I just took my hair down and held up some of my ukulele's to the length to see if this sort of experiment would even be possible for me. I have two things to say about this:
1) I spend way too much time on LHC.
and
2) I would change my current length to tenor if there was enough room.

[silverjen]

Hello, wooliswonderful, I'm a knitter too!

I don't have much personal experience spinning, but I've watched my mom do her hand-spinning. Given how much slip human hair has, compared to wool, wouldn't it be pretty tough to spin? Wouldn't it pull apart as soon as you put tension on the strands? It's the interlocking cuticle that makes wool stick together. I wonder if you could add something to temporarily help the individual hairs stick together, long enough to get it plied, anyway.

I agree a plied I-cord would be the ticket. :)

[BlazingHeart]

Human hair is slippy, yeah, but it has NOTHING on alpaca or silk. It'd be hard to do anything less than bulky weight out of human hair, as the individual hairs are so thick (especially when you're dealing with relatively coarse-haired folks like me), but it could be done.

It'd have to be high twist yarn, though, so it wouldn't feel all that nice. Between the high twist and the thickness of the individual strands, it'd be stiff and scratchy.

~Blaze

[MasCat]

I would believe this theory. One day for giggles, I took seven strands of hair, spun them together, and (this is the giggles part ...)

Replaced the high "d" string on my Gothic Bray Harp. The string came up to tune and held during a 45-min. practice. It probably would have been playable longer. It showed no ware from the finger-nails, peg or pin. Just a slight crimp where it had been held into the soundboard. Even the end wrapped around the tuning peg smoothed out.

I was curious about tinsel strength after reading different "historical" stringing materials. Also chose that particular string as I didn't know what pull it would have on the soundboard. One of these days I may try the entire upper octave with various count strands. (Lower octaves I don't have enough length for ... yet.)

Well, I highly advise to see the webpage of Telyn Rawn project. They are reconstructing the ancient Welsh harp strung with horsehair.

Ann Heymann said, that before she made the horsehair strings she used some of her own hair (she's a renegray all the way, beautiful hair to her waist) and it played just fine :)

[Ava666]

The other weekend I went to the Ringling Brothers circus, and one of the acts there were 2 girls that hung from the ceiling by their hair. it looked really painful, and they did all sorts of spins and stuff... just OW.

[wooliswonderful]

...wooliswonderful, threadcraft has clearly warped your mind. :D


Yup. :cool: I don't knit Jujus (http://www.theanticraft.com/archive/samhain05/badjuju.htm) anymore though. :blushing:


Hello, wooliswonderful, I'm a knitter too!

I don't have much personal experience spinning, but I've watched my mom do her hand-spinning. Given how much slip human hair has, compared to wool, wouldn't it be pretty tough to spin? Wouldn't it pull apart as soon as you put tension on the strands? It's the interlocking cuticle that makes wool stick together. I wonder if you could add something to temporarily help the individual hairs stick together, long enough to get it plied, anyway.

I agree a plied I-cord would be the ticket. :)

I wouldn't say tough to spin, just different. I just pulled some hair out of a brush and it spun up right quick, and didn't pull apart. It was just a bit stretchy, like Kari showed on the episode.
I guess I just love any excuse to use I-cord. :D

[Henrietta]

I am curious where did they get all this hair from ;)