The most recent batch of Huck weave towels we bought are terrible. They leave little blue strings behind. Not just a wee bit of lint. Big blue strings everywhere, like I wiped my project with Grover during the high shedding season for Muppets.
I first fell in like with Huck towels when Ty Black, who worked in my shop, brought in a bunch of surgical towels that his (now ex-) wife had brought home from her hospital job. They were listed as sterile. They were amazing. They were soft but had a pebbly finish that was great for rubbing out wax and other finishes. They absorbed lots of material. They were washable and reusable. And I never saw Grover fur stuck to every arris.
So I am issuing a warning about Huck towels. There are so many vendors out there. I cannot try every one of them, but I can fall back on what I know: sterile surgical towels.
Today I received a shipment of sterile surgical towels from Medline at Home. They were about the same price as other vendors. But here’s the difference. They are the real deal. They are in sterile packs. And they don’t leave strings behind.
So if you have been unimpressed with the Huck towels I’ve recommended in the past, I encourage you to give them another try from a medical vendor. If they are listed as sterile and come in sealed, sterile packs, they are the real thing (surgeons don’t like to leave blue strings inside their patients during surgery).
I apologize if y’all have been afflicted by the Hair-loss Grover towels.
— Christopher Schwarz
Do you call them huck towels because you throw them away?
No. Those are Chuck Towels.
I think you’re thinking of ‘Toss Towels.’
Chuck Towels was the miscreant muppet who lurked in the shadows of Sesame Street. Dressed up as officer Stan, snatched up Lefty in the Tan Van, and tied him up with Dan AND Fran, and then ransomed the golden AN. He was the reason Sergeant Thursday never made it to Friday. And when he needed an N, kidnapped letter W, and made do.
Creepiest one was when he locked up The Count in his attic: “It rubs the crayons on its skin, and then it counts to twelve again. Heh. Heh. Heh.”
After that, I heard his partner S was scared straight.
Horrible. Stuff of nightmares. He was the real monster at the end of that book.
Probably explains what happened with your huck towels…
Is “No strings attached” their slogan?
Thanks for the heads up. And the sourcing. Ordered a couple dozen a few years ago per your rec on a blog post. Love ’em. Some were destroyed, some were lost and some just wore out so I need to replenish my supply.
Which ones do you end up washing vs. tossing (when effectively used-up)? I can imagine for soap finishes or cleaning up hide glue a regular cycle would be fine and not really transfer to other things in a washing machine afterwards, but a wax finish (with and without pigment) seems a bit more problematic on that front. I’d love to reduce the amount of paper-towels I use in the shop, reduce waste and have a higher quality tool, etc.
We wash them all, except the ones we use for black wax. They clean up just fine and last a long long time. Just don’t cut them. Then they unravel.
And I wash them in a separate load
Excellent to know, yet another reason to use finishes that won’t kill you. Will keep an eye out for surgical towels up here in Canada,
several years ago i bought a box of huck towels for window cleaning. i’m still using those towels. with two buildings, it might be something to study a bit on. nothing brightens up a room like clean windows. like polishing the chrome on a car.
I like them so much I have some just for home use, they make great kitchen towels. Thank goodness I don’t have any Grover types.
So that’s what a huck towel is! About 20 years ago a neighbor gave me about 15-20 of these towels that a family member brought home from the hospital. I’ve washed them hundreds of times and ,sadly, some have died a tragic death due to the dread unraveling. I try not to use these for solvents & very messy things and instead rely on my never ending supply of 100% cotton T-shirt rags – these go in the trash. I’m very cautious about drying rags that have had solvents or waxes on them for fear of a fire.
My family used to own a building in the Mission District in San Francisco, where there was a pretty good Mexican restaurant run by a lovely family. One night their cleaning crew brought a bunch of terry cloth towels back from the laundry and left them in a pile in the back room, still warm from the laundry. A tenant in one of the apartments at the property noticed something smoldering in there over night, grabbed a fire extinguisher in the courtyard, smashed a window, and put out the fire that the pile of freshly cleaned oily towels was becoming. (It doesn’t quite conform to my understanding of spontaneous combustion, but I swear it happened.) The moral: be REAL careful about what you do with chemical-soaked towels, even AFTER you’ve laundered them.
I appreciate the apology. I wiped my head with Hair-loss Grover towels, and now I’m bald. Odd product. I assumed towels for hair-loss were preventative, not promotional.
Live and don’t learn, I guess.
Didn’t know anyone else used surgical towels. I get them from work and have used them for years.
Anyone knows if we have any towels of that type in Europe? I tried a few keywords in French (linges, serviettes, compresses, stérile coton…), but to no avail. I would be surprised if those towels were only found in the US.
Try https://www.medline.eu/ and select your specific country from the drop down list
I think these https://www.medline.eu/fr/essuie-mains-chirurgicaux are what you need
Thank you Nig!
My wife brought some home from the VA and they left debris after wiping stuff down as well. I guess they use the cheap ones too!
I guess I got lucky with my last batch from Amazon. Thanx for the warning.
The bad huck towels I have encountered look like blue versions of those horrible red rags you get at the auto parts store. It’s been a couple of years, but I found dish towels at IKEA to be really good substitute – similar texture to the good huck towels and they hold up. White with stripes rather than blue, so they show dirt really well. But they are around a buck a piece, as I recall, and after they do their duty in the kitchen they move into the shop.