Thread: Nasal hair -- burning tapers

This works on the same principle as singing your arm-hair without burning the skin. Your skin contains a good amount of water so it is able to absorb more energy than hair. Medieval barbers used to use hot pokers to singe the hair but for us it would be safer and easier to use a cool-burning non-toxic substance.

I also us a Neti pot religiously. Now there is a blast to clean you out.

Here here! Lets here it for the Neti! I've been a Neti user for two or three years. Have only gotten sick once since, and that was do to extreme exposure to mold and/or worse in a hotel.

Regarding making singeing tapers, based on what I've seen in barber collectible books, and some rudimentary knowledge on candle making, they were basically a very thin wax candle. In fact so thin it would be better to describe them as a candle wick with a thick wax coating.

To make them you could just dip candle wick material in molten wax as if you were making a taper, just a couple of coats. I imagine it would be desirable to make one that didn't drip and that could be achieved by finding the propper proportion of wick to wax. Ideally the wax and wick would be completely consumed, leaving no wax to drip. Another method to achieve a no-drip taper is to overdip with a wax that has a higher meting temp.

The thing is, I wouldn't use this to burn my nasal hairs! Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

From what I've read, hair singeing was done for at least a couple of reasons:

1) At one time it was believed (by some) that vital fluids would leak from freshly cut hair. Singeing was supposed to prevent this.

2) Singeing was used to treat split ends. Why there would be split ends on freshly cut hair I don't know.

Supposedly, singeing perfumed oiled and pomaded hair (common with men at the time) contributed a distinct, possibly pleasant, odor to old time barbershops.

While researching this, I came across a story about a barber who tried singeing his customers hair right after applying some hair tonic with a high alcohol content. The customers head turned into a fireball. The barber put the fire out by beating the customer over the head with shop towels. Now there's service for you.

I tried different methods to remove ear hair including an alcohol soaked cotton ball on a length of spring steel like the barbers use and didn't like it. I found the best method was a fire starter with a flexible shaft was ideal using a low flame.