Creature Suit Analysis - Part 8 - Neck Hackles

[Bill]

Creature Suit Analysis Part 8 Neck hackle

The dark panel of hair on the back of the neck mystified me tremendously once I started reviewing the PG film for my participation in this forum.

My first impresion was that the hair on the back of the neck should have a highlight shimmering on it, if anything, but not a "black hole" of powerful shadow in that area.

After much deliberation, I began to wonder if it might be fur raised erect from the skin or furcloth (a cautionary distinction here so I won't be misintrepreted to have gone into these notes with a preconceived assumption of whether its real fur and skin I'm seeing, or a fabricated creature suit.)

Either real fur on a living creature or furcloth on a creature suit may lay down approximating the body contour (smooth fur) or the hair may be in dis-array, jumbled into many varied directions of lay and lack of smoothness. Or hair can be erected so it approximates a perpendicular to the lay of the underlying base structure (real skin or furcloth base fabric). We would describe it as standing up or bristled.

I began to wonder if this darkened area on the neck, which I fully expected to be highlighted, has a deep shadow because it is erect or bristled hair?

Basically, hair (real or synthetic) is a long thin cylinder, often curving in its overall form. And it has its highest degree of reflectance when it lays perpendicular to the light shining on it, and the view it's seen from. The neck hair, if it lays down the body contour, should have a lot of simmering highlight.

But hair raised up to be "standing" or erect hair, when pointed at the light source, now has nearly no flat reflective surface to highlight, and has the capacity to cast a shadow onto the hair shaft below it. And that, in my estimation, is what caused the dark neck section to be so conspicuously dark.

With that assumption, I now considered how a real creature's fur might cause such a pattern, and considered as well how such a pattern could be generated on a fur creature suit, either intentionally, or by simple neglect for grooming the suit.

First the real creature hypothesis:

A real mammal generally has hair folicules which tend to have a general "lay" of the hair, a sense of inate direction, which may be straight outward from the skin, or may be angled, and even swirled at changing angles around a circular focal point. The human head hair pattern does in many people swirl around one such point, and it's most evident in hair less than an inch long.

And some natural hair patterns include sections of hair that is "bristly" (standing straight out from the body). The Zebra's mane is a fine example. And in consultation with a few friends on the forum, it was pointed out to me that lowland gorillas, especially the silverbacks, do have a neck fur pattern that often has the darkened spot caused by the hair standing straight out, instead of laying toward the body contour, as the silver/grey back hair does.

But real mammals also have beside the hair folicules an erector muscle, which can erect or "bristle" the fur overall (often in the cold) or can bristle certain body sections as an emotional response to a situation. And among humans and some other mammals, "raising the hair on the back of the neck" is a fear response, an action that occurs when a person (or creature ) is suddenly startled and the source of that feeling causes some fear, apprehension, or anxiety.

So it seemed logical to me that if the figure in the PG Film is real, this "species" of primate may have a natural hair pattern that includes a bristle of hair on the neck, like silverback gorillas, or it may have been surprized by strange intruders in its domain, inducing a fear/anxiety response might include a raised neck hackle, and the angle of the erected hair on the back of the neck would tend to look on the film exactly as we see it.

So if we hypothesize we are seeing a real creature, the dark fur coloration and shadow structure has a high degree of probability or normalcy. It makes sense.

Chart One Follows

Now the Creature Suit Hypothesis:

But now we need to look at it from the creature suit (hoax) point of view. Suffice to say, artificial hair or furcloth does not have erector muscles, but it does have grooming assistants. Could you do that with a suit? Yes, hair can be backbrushed or otherwise "raised".

So allow me to explain how that is done.

Generally, with a suit of fur, grooming it to have all the hair lay flat is the most common task. Brushing it out to be smooth and flat makes it look best, and the smoothed hair forms the best cover for any tailoring seams, closure seams, and the like. If anything, the general handling of the suit to dress the human inside, and any movement of the human mime (such as simply brushing the hand against the thigh of the suit) causes some hair of the furcloth to become disarrayed. So as a matter of both experience and practicality, the person grooming the fur is almost always brushing the hair down to a smooth flat lay.

Making the fur stand up is not so easy. You can backbrush it (like teasing hair) if it's not too long (like 1" to 2" maybe) and it will stand up. But it tends to do so with conspicuous brushstroke patterns. The better way to make hair stand up on furcloth is to use a compressed air spray (like an airbrush hooked to a compressor or compressed air metal cannister and regulator) and you can spray the air flow up into the hair lay, and it will tend to raise up. You get a smoother control of the degree of raised height, and a smoother blend of the edges back into the fur which is still laying down.

But this is a rare skill, and even a lot of makeup effects people don't have the "knack" for really nice hair effects such as this. From personal experience, I've made some recreation figures of silverback gorillas, at levels of taxidermy realism (and have two "Best in World Recreations" awards from the World Taxidermy Competition it show for it). For the gorillas, I wanted the hair on the rear of the sagital crest to flair up and back as the hair does on real silverbacks, instead of just smoothly following the head contour down the back of the skull. So I've backbrushed my share of hair trying to get that raised hair look and keep it natural. So I do speak from some experience when I say it's a bit tricky to get it looking right.

Further, if the mime wearing the suit feels the head mask is not sitting right, the normal inclination is for the mime to try and grab the head mask and twist or pull it down to adjust it, like adjusting a hat, and than action can include sliding the hands down the back of the neck to pull the mask back down firmly. But that action will flatten the bristled up hair. So the grooming assistant now has to start over, because repairing a bristled look half flattened by careless hands is harder than just brushing it all out down and starting over to bristle it back up in the desired pattern. But if your air spray equipment isn't close by, you have to walk the mime back to your work area to do the job.

Whereas if the style is just normally brushed down hair, all the grooming assistant needs to do is carry a hairbrush, and can groom the hair anywhere, on a moment's notice. So people who do this for a living do factor in what is more easy to maintain, and the normally brushed down hair is far easier to maintain. Lack of maintainance, if photographed, preserves forever the groomer's failure to do the job right. So better to choose the grooming style that's the easier to maintain, and the one more assured to look perfect every time the camera rolls. That's just basic good professionalism, insuring you can do the job well.

Another factor to consider is that generally, you never do this in a seam area, because if anything in the seaming has a potential for reflectance, the raised hair makes it easier to look down into the hair and see some glittering part of the seam hardware if the hair is fluffed up that way. Further complicating this issue is the fact that any real fur used for a suit (bear hide, for example) or any reasonably good artificial fur, has both guard hairs (the long outer hair) and base fur (the short, soft and kinky insulating fur).

Brushing hair down and smooth causes the long guard hair to completely cover and hide the base fur. Backbrushing the fur up allows you to see under the guard hairs and more easily see the base fur beneath. But in a furcloth seam, there's no base fur in the seam split line (base fur tends to fray and unravel at the cut edge of a furcloth sheet or natural hide, just from the handling during suit fabrication). So between the two pieces of furcloth being joined by the seam, there is usually a lack of base fur. Backbrushing over a seam area is thus more likely to reveal that seam also because there would be a line where there's no base fur underneath, a second potential giveaway of a seam (aside from any potential reflectance of seam parts). Usually, we brush the hair down smooth over a seam, to hide it better. And the region where the neck shadows are (in the PG Film figure) is a prime area for some type of neck seam.

But assuming you are still determined to create this raised hackle type of hair effect, this type of hair grooming must be done only after the person is fully suited up. Now you may be wondering, why not style it once and then give it a thick once over with an extra hold hairspray to set it in that fluffed up form. That's a common assumption, that hairspray will solve the problem, but here, theory collides with reality. Only a fool would do anything to a suit where you styled it and hairsparyed it to stay put, if you will then crumple it to undress the mime, and the sprayed hair, once crumpled, may then collapse into a sprayed pattern of complete disarray instead of the smooth raised sytle you worked so hard to achieve. So from experience, suit makers generally try to never spray the fur hair into any style if the whole dressing/undressing sequence may cause a lot of pulling, bending and any crumpling of the furcloth. They don't want to risk the hairspray locking in a crumpled look they can't easily brush out.

You can do challenging and naturally detailed hair styling of creature figures if, once you style the hair and spray it to hold it as styled, you never disturb it after that. Meaning, if you do this for a non-moving figure, a figure you never try to remove the fur from later, like a museum exhibit model, a taxidermy display, etc. But for a creature suit, you must asume that you will repeatedly dress and undress the mime, and have to keep grooming and styling the fur as a repeated and ongoing task, so you wisely choose which styles you can sustain, and which styles, when ruined by the dressing process, can be most easily restored. On a scale of hardship, the bristled or raised fur patterns are the very hardest to style, sustain, and repair if messed up.

So I come back to the curious question: If this is a suit, somewhere in that darkened section of fur in the neck, there's a seam, and fluffing up the hair to give a "raised hackle" sort of look is both a difficult skill for a fur suit grooming person, and is more likely to show any potential seaming underneath.

If it's a suit, it's a deliberate fur styling action on the part of a grooming assistant on the day of the filming, because a person inside the suit can't do it, and the mere action of putting on the head mask and pulling it down to mate with the body fur will smash the fur downward if it was styled before the suit was put on.

Chart Two Follows

In Summary then, assuming we are looking at a creature fur suit :

1. The backbrushed styling to create the shadow area of the neck wasn't done by the person wearing the suit.

2. It wasn't done until after the suit was fully dressed on the human inside, that day, right before "performing" for the camera.

3. It's the more challenging fur grooming skill, and more likely to expose a neck seam (an odd contridiction, because the former requires a skilled professional, and the latter, a skilled professional wisely avoids doing).

4. It wasn't done in a previous suit fitting, because the mere act of getting out of the suit, storing it, and dressing back into it, all crumple and bend the suit and fur a lot, ruining the grooming look.

5. There is no particular reason why the people doing this needed to do so many things that are hard, when just brushing out the hair downward and left unsprayed is so much easier.

Can it be done? Maybe, in a big budget Hollywood production where a director (like Orsen Wells or Stanley Kubrick) was obcessed with subtle anatomical details, and had the crew manpower to insist that everything be "perfect".

Would it have been done on a shoestring hoax filming by a few amateurs? Not without a skillful fur/hair grooming assistant and some support equipment there, on site to dress the fur after the actor was suited up.

What is the probability it was done for the PG film? About the same as the probability Orsen Wells or Stanley Kubrick was consulting with Patterson on how to be a perfectionist filmmaker?

Two references on another thread are related to this discussion, because of photos they contain, but as I did not know the protocol of copying pictures from another thread, I'll simply reference their location.

Dfoot thread, page 15, post 356 by Mangler photo of two gorilla like suits from back, neck hair brushed down

Same thread, Page 16, post #383 by Dfoot, photos described as rehursal of people in suits (for remake of Planet of the Apes, makeup supervision by Rick Baker), with neck fur brushed down smooth. and bottom of post, final photo, neck brushed down smooth with highlighted sheen.

The reason these photos are relevent, especially those attributed to Rick Baker and his team of artists at Cinevation, is that Rick is truly one of the makeup industry's certifiable geniuses, he has studied gorillas for over 40 years, has built more gorilla characters for movies than anybody else, has the best budgets in the industry for his work, and has an incredible team of talented people working with him on his major studio projects. What Rick & Co. produce is generally regarded as the finest the industry can do, the best, bar none, the gold standard all others are measured by.

So if the finest artist with the biggest budget and the best crews and the most opportunity to do gorillas right, perfect, still brushes the neck hair back down smooth to help hide seams and for the ease of grooming maintainance, and if this smoothed down hairstyle isn't authentic compared to real gorillas, which have the hair more bristled up, if Rick and Co. can't do it as real gorillas appear and as perfectly as Patty appears, who can?

Seams I haven't figured out this picture posting thing yet, and can't get charts into the text, or even get them in correct order.

The chart showing a real gorilla and PG frames is Chart One. The drawing chart is Chart Two.

Still on a learning curve here.

Bill

[bipedalist]

Creature Suit Analysis Part 8 Neck hackle

The dark panel of hair on the back of the neck mystified me tremendously once I started reviewing the PG film for my participation in this forum.

My first impresion was that the hair on the back of the neck should have a highlight shimmering on it, if anything, but not a "black hole" of powerful shadow in that area.

After much deliberation, I began to wonder if it might be fur raised erect from the skin or furcloth (a cautionary distinction here so I won't be misintrepreted to have gone into these notes with a preconceived assumption of whether its real fur and skin I'm seeing, or a fabricated creature suit.)

So if the finest artist with the biggest budget and the best crews and the most opportunity to do gorillas right, perfect, still brushes the neck hair back down smooth to help hide seams and for the ease of grooming maintainance, and if this smoothed down hairstyle isn't authentic compared to real gorillas, which have the hair more bristled up, if Rick and Co. can't do it as real gorillas appear and as perfectly as Patty appears, who can?

Seams I haven't figured out this picture posting thing yet, and can't get charts into the text, or even get them in correct order.

The chart showing a real gorilla and PG frames is Chart One. The drawing chart is Chart Two.

Still on a learning curve here.

Bill

Bill you explain this so well an amateur can "get it". This bristle neck hair seems to be a highly important detail in making

this movie figure more like a real primate/hominid. Thanks again and well done of course

Edited February 4, 2008 by bipedalist

[Guest colobus]

Hi Bill,

Someone's going to ask, so I might as well. Could the darker "hair" effect be achieved by means of decidedly low tech methods like using a different color of "hair", or even painting some hair a different color?

Also, in another thread Longtabber makes the assertion that manufacturers of artificial fibers would discard rolls of test products, and that the flexible mesh furcloth you state was NOT available in 1967 WAS indeed available to wig manufacturers etc... Could you please comment on this assertion.

Thanks for the interesting information.

[Bill]

Bipedalist:

In my opinion, yes, the bristled hair is a highly important clue, given it occurs so naturally and is so unnaturally difficult to create for suits.

Colobus:

Using a different color fur, and patching the two (a grey section with a more black section, for example) is hard because the junction of the two tends to be such a perfect line, and it doesn't shift (as the blackened spot on Patty's neck tends to shift it's edges somewhat through the film sequence.) So it appears to me to be behaving more like light and shadow that intrinsic coloration of fur sections, because the fur itself seems near black overall, and the greyishness is reflective highlighting or sheen.

But if it were to be faked in a suit, chances are one fur color would be used, and some parts painted darker, so you get a softer edge or transition of color than sewing different color sections together.

I have read Longtabber's notes on fabric manufacture (or at least some of them, can't be sure I read them all), and I am not aware of any industry development of stretchable fabrics with hair woven in back in the 60's, even in the wig industry.

The wig industry did use stretch caps that wefted hair was then sewn onto, and these caps had some stretch, because of the spacing between the wefts, which themselves did not stretch. So many of these wig caps were indeed "stretchy". But a wefted hair structure has gaps of about 1/2" to 3/4" between the wefts, and needed longer hair to generally hide the wefted structure.

Further, once a wig is stretched onto a person's head, and then styling is touched up or brushed to hide any exposed wefting, the wig really stays solid on the head. It has no stretching, no mobility during wear. So once it is styled to hide the wefts, the styling stays.

But on a body suit, the motion of the body and the flexing, stretching, bending and rubbing of the body motion on the fur suit causes any underlying structure to be more revealed, and so I personally would expect somewhere in the motion exhibited in the film, the wefted structure to be exposed, if the fur suit was a stretch-based wefted hair design. Shorter hair also exposes wefts and the gaps between more readily, and the fur on Patty is short by all wig standards.

I am not aware of any fabric industry production of true stretch furcloth until National Hair Technology in Lawrence, Mass. finally perfected their knitting process to hand feed chopped hair fibers into the knitting machine as the machine knitted the base stretch spandix fabric, in the earlt 1980's.

And I recall Tom Burman, who apprenticed under John Chambers on the Planet of the Apes, and was one of the creature guys at the top of the business in the 70's and beyond (still active today) trying to create stretch fur for "Cat People" (around 1980, thereabouts) by taking a black leopard fur and imbedding the fur in a temporary matrix, cutting the hide base away, and trying to cast a flexible silicone new hide or base to imbed the fur, so once the matrix was removed, the real fur pelt had a silicone stretch base instead of a more rigid tanned hide base. Didn't work, and the mere fact that a top effects man was experimenting with such a cumbersome and radical approach suggests to me there was no stretch fur he could find, even among his excellent industry associates, to save him the trouble.

So if Longtabber's description of a stretch furcloth (and not just a stretch cap for a wefted wig) really existed in the late 60's or even early 70's, nobody in Hollywood knew about it, because everybody in Hollywood was searching desperately for it, and once one person finds it, it becomes industry common knowledge in a matter of a few months, maybe a year at most. Such is the gossip mill among the people in the industry.

So I'm clueless as to what he's referring to, if not the stretch cap wefted wig.

Bill

[Guest rolando]

As usual, great analysis! The more you write about this, the more it becomes obvious that, either Patterson and Gimlin and Bob H were geniuses of costume manufacture and design or we are simply looking at a film of a female sasquatch.

Have a great day!

[Guest Lyndon]

Great thread and excellent points once again Bill.

5. There is no particular reason why the people doing this needed to do so many things that are hard,

This is the thing that bugs me more and more with the suit hypothesis,. It just doesn't make sense, especially after reading all your detailed explanations, which by the way are far more detailed than anything else I have ever read on this subject.

Edited February 4, 2008 by Lyndon

[Guest longtabber PE]

So if Longtabber's description of a stretch furcloth (and not just a stretch cap for a wefted wig) really existed in the late 60's or even early 70's, nobody in Hollywood knew about it, because everybody in Hollywood was searching desperately for it, and once one person finds it, it becomes industry common knowledge in a matter of a few months, maybe a year at most. Such is the gossip mill among the people in the industry.

So I'm clueless as to what he's referring to, if not the stretch cap wefted wig.

Bill

Let me go into a bit more detail to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding.

I dont know what a "stretch fur cloth" is ( at least by that name) and that was NOT specifically and only what I was referring to. Actually, "fur' is a relative term because unless one is talking actual animal hair- it aint "fur" to begin with. I knew my hand may get called so i had to hit my reference book to make sure of my facts and post references. (Encyclopedia of Textiles-ISBN-13: 978-0816021055 ) and a few others on my shelf (Textile Processing and Properties ISBN-10: 0444882243 ) because i'm not a walking factoid of textile processes.

This production process for mass producing this product ( in the old days referred to in the industry as "fish fur" because it comes from no known animal) has been around since 1929 ( which well predates the PGF) and became really popular in the 1950's ( driven primarily by animal rights people as viable alternatives to real fur) Many manufacturers jumped all over themselves in a textile race to develop newer and better "fish fur" to give the ladies all those fake minks ( as well as fuzzy mats, fur for lining parkas, hats and the like)

The "fur" ranged from wool, cotton and natural fibers to the bulk fibers which are typically composed of polymers, including acrylics, modacrylics, or appropriate blends of these polymers. Acrylic polymers are made from chemicals derived from coal, air, water, petroleum, and limestone. They are the result of a chemical reaction of an acrylonitrile monomer under conditions of elevated pressure and heat. Other naturally occurring fabrics are also used to make fake furs and improve the look and feel of the overall garment. These include materials such as silk, wool, and mohair. Cotton or wool, along with polypropylene, are typically used to make the backings to which the fibers are attached. Rayon, a semisynthetic fiber made from cellulose and cotton linters, is used to supplement acrylic and modacrylic fibers on the garment, as are polyester and nylon.

As far as the manufacturing processes- ( notice that none of this involves gluing) they range from "twist and tuck", the jersey process, loop weaving, closed loop knitting, sliver knitting, tufting and others.

As far as the substrate material ( the backing)- they can be woven on anything from paper, any kind of material ( to include any kind of stretch fabrics) even to balsa wood and "nylons" ( womens hose).

As far as "flexible"- Cloth Stretching machines as well as chemical and chain mercerizing can make a backing as stiff or flexible as one wants ( 1890's technology)

The only point i was making in the skeptical thread and the same one I'm making here is simply this.

This "flexible fur" ( fish fur) existed, was common in the industry and readily available in any size, shape,color, length of hair or backing ( rigid, elastic or anywhere inbetween). It could be obtained by the bolt, scrap, tails ( front and rear of the runs). It was available in 1967 and more than 20 years before that.

Its degree of "difficulty" to obtain was no more complex that get a copy of the TR ( or similar industry listings available) and make a few phone calls.

Just to make sure I'm getting the point across and not misstating anything or causing any confusion.

I'm not saying anyone discovered this ( Patterson or whoever). I'm not saying the alleged patty suit is made from any of this material. I'm not even saying the PGF isnt a BF.

All I'm saying is this. The arguments that such material(s) didnt exist and were not available in 1967 are factually incorrect. Its a known industry fact. I'm not addressing what anyone in Hollywood knew or didnt.

The ONLY point I was making was that such raw materials, processes and finished products were in fact produced and readily available to anyone who wanted them in 1967. The claims that they didnt exist then are factually incorrect and that its POSSIBLE that such materials were used to construct such a suit.

[Bill]

Longtabber:

I think the confusion here is the distinction between "flexible fur" and "elastic furcloth", in otherwords, the elastic potential of the base the fibers (resembling the fur) are woven into.

Yes, spandix and similar elastic threads did exist then, and could be woven into elastic cloths, but could anybody weave a hair fiber into the spandix base weave, resulting in a true "stretch furcloth", not just a flexible furcloth?

This is what did not exist in Hollywood, and many people in Hollywood did go straight to fur suppliers (the actual mills) asking, indeed begging, for such.

So while your argument may be that "theoretically" it was possible then, in practical terms, it simply did not exist for anyone who made creature suits.

Bill

[Guest longtabber PE]

Longtabber:

I think the confusion here is the distinction between "flexible fur" and "elastic furcloth", in otherwords, the elastic potential of the base the fibers (resembling the fur) are woven into.

Yes, spandix and similar elastic threads did exist then, and could be woven into elastic cloths, but could anybody weave a hair fiber into the spandix base weave, resulting in a true "stretch furcloth", not just a flexible furcloth?

This is what did not exist in Hollywood, and many people in Hollywood did go straight to fur suppliers (the actual mills) asking, indeed begging, for such.

So while your argument may be that "theoretically" it was possible then, in practical terms, it simply did not exist for anyone who made creature suits.

Bill

>>I think the confusion here is the distinction between "flexible fur" and "elastic furcloth", in otherwords, the elastic potential of the base the fibers (resembling the fur) are woven into.

Heres where I'm not 100% certain what you are referring to and what I'm saying are the same thing ( we are using different terminology) so before I/you address this to the board- prehaps we need to go offline and make sure we are both "calibrated' to each other as to avoid starting yet another round of "speculation"- the terms you are using and the terms i am may or may not be the same thing at this point and as a benefit to the people who are reading- its our duty to make sure there arent "errors" on our part.

>>>Yes, spandix and similar elastic threads did exist then, and could be woven into elastic cloths, but could anybody weave a hair fiber into the spandix base weave, resulting in a true "stretch furcloth", not just a flexible furcloth?

Thats actually 2 questions and the divider being a hair FIBER ( a synthetic resembling hair) versus an actual hair. Then was it available in 1967?. its important to note at this point that the subject film ( the PGF) cannot even begin to address the actual hair v synthetic issue)

If you are addressing the hair fiber- the answer is a qualified,verifiable and absolute YES. No question about it.

If you are addresing actual hair ( human or animal)- those processes didnt get perfected ( to a production standard) until the late 70's/early 80's so those would NOT have been available in 1967. ( thats where I need to state to you as one professional to another- I have never been involved in an actual hair process- but the process is the same- I just never did it personally)

As far as the substrate backing ( i cant speak to spandex specifically)- the synthetics available in 1967 could have been knitted in a 2 X 4 if there was a needle strong enough so the answer is yes. Any backing ( thru chemical and mercerizing processes) could be made with any bulk or flexibility desired. There were also elastic backings available then. For that matter, the weave process could weave it in an inner tube. The weavers/knitters ( machines) didnt care. If they could punch it- they could weave it.

>>>This is what did not exist in Hollywood, and many people in Hollywood did go straight to fur suppliers (the actual mills) asking, indeed begging, for such.

maybe thats the disconnect- instead of going to actual fur suppliers ( which from what i remember is a horse of another color entirely)- they should have gone to actual textile manufacturers to see what they could do with synthetics. I factually know it could be done there to order and in any length, bulk, hue, thickness you wanted

>>>So while your argument may be that "theoretically" it was possible then, in practical terms, it simply did not exist for anyone who made creature suits.

With all due respect Bill- its NOT "theoretically" possible- its FACTUALLY possible. ( thats a difference)

People who made 'creature suits' may have simply never thought "outside the box" and asked modern manufacturing what they could do. The imperical FACT is that these technologies and the products resulting from them DID exist and were READILY available so an argument based on "practical terms" doesnt hold water.

I dont pretend to refute or challenge your obvious expertise and experience in your field. I have stated publically and privately how impressed i am with your knowledge and capability. I will not back off of those accolades. You have "been there and done that"- I see it and acknowledge it.

On the other hand- regardless of what you ( or hollywood et al) were aware of or not- the technology and final product necessary to construct such a suit WAS in fact available in 1967. It was cheap ( in 1967 dollars) and easy to find for anyone who looked diligently.

Joe

[Bill]

With respect to Longtabber's request, I will go offline and see if he and I can sort this out, and we'll get back to all of you on the forum with the results.

Bill

[Guest longtabber PE]

With respect to Longtabber's request, I will go offline and see if he and I can sort this out, and we'll get back to all of you on the forum with the results.

Bill

I love an agreement and its a wonderful thing. Bill has contacted me and I'm about to answer.

He and I will hash it out and post our respective views shortly.

Thats the best way as the answers to these questions can have serious ramifications on a lot of things

Respectfully to the board

Joe

[Guest]

Correct me if Im wrong - but isnt the current skeptical theory (courtesy of Bob H) that the fur was actually from a dead horse, that Mr. Patterson skinned?

So, what manufacturers are you talking about Longtabber? Just curious.

Oh, by the way.. As long as that dead horse theory is batted around, its still something that must be answered to.

[Guest Monkey's Uncle]

Correct me if Im wrong - but isnt the current skeptical theory (courtesy of Bob H) that the fur was actually from a dead horse, that Mr. Patterson skinned?

Melissa,

That's an interesting point which gets overlooked. In my opinion Patty's hair appears to be too long to be horse hair.

- Roger

Edited February 5, 2008 by Monkey's Uncle

[Guest soarwing]

Correct me if Im wrong - but isnt the current skeptical theory (courtesy of Bob H) that the fur was actually from a dead horse, that Mr. Patterson skinned?

So, what manufacturers are you talking about Longtabber? Just curious.

Oh, by the way.. As long as that dead horse theory is batted around, its still something that must be answered to.

- - -

According to Dfoot, BH was repeating someone else's claim about it being made from horsehide.

But even if that's true, how in the hell could BH NOT know the difference if it WASN'T horsehide in reality?

Besides that, it would take more than one dead horse to make the suit - even if you got it perfect the first time through.

The horsehide claim is so absurd.

[Bill]

To All:

Yes, the horse hide claim is pretty absurd. Between the shortness of the hair (even with horses' winter coats) and the thickness of the skinned hide beneath (horribly unresponsive to the kind of bending and twisting a suit goes through) it is the worst imaginable thing to try and make a suit out of. (Well. maybe Sumatrain Rhino hide would be worse, bt you get the idea.)

:evillaugh:

Bill