Hose Height / How much knee?

[OC Richard]

Between military regulations and historical pictures, there seemed, in my opinion again, too muchy emphasis on the correct and accepted way to do things.

I should point out that I myself never put 'emphasis on the correct' but rather showed old images and let them speak for themselves. Time and again on this forum when people bring up a particular question I'll say "let's take a long look at that" to see (from primary sources) what's been done over the last couple hundred years. This approach, the descriptive approach, is to be distinguished from the prescriptive approach where I would say "this is how it should be done".

About 'military regulations' regarding hose height I just looked over this entire thread and I didn't see anyone mention any such. I've never encountered such. What I did say is that when diced hosetops are worn with spats, the amount of the hosetop which is seen is dictated by the number of diamonds showing; in other words the height itself isn't considered (nor is it under the wearer's control) just the appearance of the dicing.

In civilian pipe bands the hose height can vary quite a bit, most bands not having any sort of guidelines, as you can see in the photos I posted. In general however experienced players will wear their kit within a fairly narrow range of variation.