The tow in ancestral houses piece by piece

When you acquire a traditional house and carry out major restoration work, it often happens that finds in ceilings or in old walls .

At first glance, we thought we had found “ Horsehair ”, Put in rolls to seal the joints between the part on part of the walls. We discovered this material while doing the curettage of the interior walls of the ground floor, going up to the structure from wall to room.

We call this filling rod between the parts: of the’ tow .

Horsehair?

It’s not horsehair.

There seems to be an urban legend about insulating a house between walls and outlines of doors and windows. When you see a fibrous strand of old plant material, the mention of “horsehair” does not hold.

In 95% of cases, it is linen tow, or as people used to call it “ flax yarn ”.

Traditionally, flax has always been cultivated in Quebec, until the first half of the 20th century.

• It can happen to see tows of walls, coiled with long pine thorns. I’m guessing there must have been a lot of pine trees in the areas surrounding these houses.
• There are also tows of flax fiber mixed with oat straw, cedar bark tow, straw and clay tows.
  
• You should know that horsehair was rather used differently. Such as, for example, seat upholstery for carioles, upholstered chairs, sofas, recamier, and other applications.

First, in photos 1 and 2, we see small flax tows of tow. These are mixed with its crushed straw.

Then, on photos-3-4-5, we stomped with cedar bark, twisted into sausages.

Here, we see that the vegetable tow serves as a support to retain the cement for the joints between the parts. Besides being an excellent insulator, it had other uses. The old lime cement clings tightly to the tow, preventing it from cracking and falling.

On photo-7, we stomped with strips of jute pockets.

On photo-8, we stunned with remnants of old catalonia. Catalognes are old woven rugs that one spread out on the wooden floor.

Source: http://www.piecesurpiece.com/index.php/foire-aux-questions/13-foire-aux-questions/travaux-interieurs/86-qle-crin-de-chevalq-dans-les-murs- urban legend