Topics

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Modding / BAC Mod Weaving yardage.

« on: June 25, 2023, 07:51:09 PM »

Now, for balance and sanity reasons this probably shouldn't be changed, but I happen to be a spinner and weaver IRL, and I've some thoughts on the yardage of thread used in weaving.

Weavers calculate the yardage of thread based on several different factors: the length of a given piece of fabric, the width of a given piece of fabric, its sett (how many threads per inch), and lastly shrinkage factor.

Shrinkage comes into play because threads are stretched to have them woven, and when you take them off the loom their elasticity shrinks back in. Normally shrinkage, depending on the fiber, is about 10% (with wool especially).

There's also the header and the foot of the fabric, which is loom waste. You find especially little loom waste with the warp-weighted looms in the BAC mod, and with backstrap looms, so I'm not too concerned about this, but typical loom waste for a rigid heddle loom is about 12 to 18 inches, and loom waste for a jack, countermarch, or counterbalance loom is about 24 to 36 inches.

The sett depends on how thick or thin the threads are. In general most fish yarn (cotton yarn used for warp in Scandinavian rug weaving) weaves up at about 12 ends per inch. So that's 12 threads of warp, + 12 threads of weft, for 24 threads per square inch.

Multiply that by the length and width of a given piece of fabric — let's say we're weaving 2ft by 4ft sections here.

That's 1152 square inches, multiplied by the threads per square inch, + 10 percent for shrinkage. That gives you 2534.4 ft of thread required, without calculating loom waste OR the amount of clothing you need for a garment.

I'm honestly not sure anyone would continue spinning and weaving using BAC if you actually did change the numbers to be accurate to RL weaving, though. But it's just a little curiosity fact stuff that I happen to specialize in.

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Gameplay questions / You Think You Might Hear Some Kind of Rustle

« on: June 25, 2023, 12:52:22 AM »

What is that message about? I get it every once in a while but when I send Rauni out with her spear there's nothing there.

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General Discussion / Santa might want to put out some want ads.

« on: June 24, 2023, 05:48:37 PM »

I've some trap-fences surrounding my fields, and some deadfalls in front of the trap-pits. That's largely to protect my little clearing and the livestock within from predators. I also have the door to my little barn protected by a fence with a heavy bear deadfall in it.

Well, Rauni, my character, was about to retire to the warmth of her fur-padded bed, when she heard an awful racket outside. She grabbed her spear from its position by the front door and stepped out to behold a bonanza of meat.

Six forest reindeer had walked into the traps. It took her all night (and she was crawling before she was done) to mercifully dispatch all the reindeer and reset and re-bait the traps.

The skinning and butchering took two more days. Drying the meat and curing the hides (she was out of bark) took three more. There were daily sacrifices of reindeer cuts over those messy days, but what she put up to dry for trade was a staggering 525 reindeer cuts.

And then after that meat party was over, she walked her trap lines south of her little homestead to find an arctic fox in its thick winter fur trapped in one of her paw-board traps.

More sacrifices to the forest spirits followed.

Rauni is going to have a very good spring. She'll hardly need to fish and she can trade a lot of that meat with the nearby Driik village (in walking distance) for furs or trade goods to stock up on. Nonperishables.

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Gameplay questions / Effin' lynx.

« on: June 20, 2023, 08:01:23 PM »

I've managed to build myself a nice little homestead with a log pen for my cow (because two characters ago my beloved Mustikka got eaten by another lynx) and ... yes, it's lynxes again.

This tufty-eared stinker is prowling around my homestead, growling and snarling. It charged at me once. I think it would eat my cow Mansikki if I didn't have her in a secure pen instead of fenced-in.

Given that lynxes can climb fences, how do I trap this feline embuggerance?

I'm thinking of going to one of the nearby Driik villages, buying a hog, and then keeping it in a pen inside my homestead and lining the fences about with pit traps. Would that work?