I did a 20 page paper on busks, primarily 16th c-18th ones, some years back and then made my own Elizabethan busk & covering. Woods cited in my sources include ash (extant examples), juniper (referred in a 16th c poem). Most museums dont identify the exact woods in their artifacts.
As Regency corsets are shorter than the 16th & 17th busks, you wont have any stresses from the wearer trying to bend thru the waist. Busks were made in other materials such as ivory, horn and baleine. I have a pic of one from a cow's rib. Removing my historian's hat & donning my workworker's gloves allow me to add the following from personal experience: I recommend light, tight grain woods like ash, cherry & poplar, as they sand to glassy smooth and wont splinter. Dont use pine & will definitely splinter if it breaks. The earliest extant wooden busk, for which we have a picture, is triangular, both in cross-section and in plan view. Dont oil treat the wood, it will bleed thru your garments. I didnt treat mine at all, natural ash absorbs body moisture and dries again w/o distorting the wood. Gotta run, --cin Cynthia Barnes cinbar...@gmail.com My main question though is about busks, I found wooden busks for sale at Corsetmaking.com for $6 each, a bargain if strong enough. I read somewhere that oak or ash were the standard woods for busks. These just say "hardwood". Given that the corsets will probably only be few times, should these be adequate? Or should I go elsewhere and order oak busks at about three times the cost? Since I need five of them, this represents a considerable investment. Paula _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
