[dai]

Before we used sqeegees it was all leather and scrim, if the windows were quite clean you could get away with scrimming only.
You can do a perfect job using scrim only, but it has to be clean and damp, it would need washing frequently, in clean water without any detergent, it was wringing them out dry enough to use that was the fun part, You would be waving the scrim about like a demented Injun sending smoke signals.

[dai]

I did 23 council houses on my own one day using the above method, that was in 1959 when I was 17.

[AuRavelling79]

And at a tanner a house you earned eleven shillings and sixpence I guess. 

[dai]

They were 2/6d, half a crown in old money. I earned £2. 17/6d that day, and my wages were only £3 a week. That's when I realised how much the old sod was making on me, he never let us know the prices on the bigger jobs.

[ftp]

I watched a scrimmer today he was cleaning faster than I could use a duster 
Never seen anything like it, the same scrim for the whole of a large house georgian pane sash windows. I couldn't wfp that fast. So there's me with thousands of pounds worth of equipment and a new £400 pole and there's him with a rag! 
I can't believe the quality was any good - why don't we all stick a rag on the end of our poles?

[Gordon Saunders]

I believe that good resuts can be achieved with ragging Its the only way to do Georgian windows inside.
The scrim needs to be damp (not wet), folded and pulled tight over the fingers.
 Its bloody hard work mind

[Ian Lancaster]

I'm sure Dai will back me up when I say that ALL window cleaning used to be done that way once upon a time.  A skilled shiner could 'rag' a window no matter how dirty, and it would come up looking perfect.  That was when we had 'proper' scrim - the rubbish you get now won't do it.

I learned the job on the old Victorian 'three decker' London schools - all tiny 'stamps' of glass, millions of them.  There was no time to leather and then polish, you had to do it in one quick action with a scrim.  Once you got the hang of it you could rag anything and get a good result.

We didn't use ladders on those schools, either - just climbed out of the windows and stood on the sills.

It would have scared the s**t out of you 'modern' cleaners who never even climb a ladder

[[GQC] Tim]

All these posts of how good scrim works makes me seriously doubt it. Sure it might look clean, but c'mon, let the sun out please, and see.

Call me an unbeliever, but in my opinion no way.

[simon knight]

We didn't use ladders on those schools, either - just climbed out of the windows and stood on the sills.

It would have scared the s**t out of you 'modern' cleaners who never even climb a ladder

I stood a sill once and the bloody thing sheared off under my feet. Thankfully it was on the ground floor.

[Pureandclean]

Yep, when I started 26 years ago, we had estates of houses with georgian windows, and we would either use damp scrim or tap the scrim onto the damp shammy. Remember most people had their windows cleaned every fortnight, so they weren't that dirty.
 I must have worked for at least a couple of years before we started using squeegies and sponges, another couple of years before we discovered tbar applicators.
 The skin on our hands used to crack up every winter, especially at the end of the thumbs.
 You could hear us "crack" drying the scrims streets away. Even when they were full of holes them scrims used to work great.
 An old window cleaner told me he used to give his new scrims to his wife to clean the kitchen floor for a week before he would use them.