Your favourite plant thread/cordage?

Hi all,

I am looking for more experienced persons' opiniom on their favourite cordage plant.

Which were tried and worked the best for you?
Did you impregnate it with grease or pitch or something to waterproof or stick fibers together?
Strongest one?

Few to consider: nettle, milkweed, yucca, wild hemp (?), palms (?), dogbane, barks....

Thanks,

HM

 
S

Stryver

Joined
Jun 5, 1999
Messages
566
I use plant cordage for very small things mostly, and frequently just use green grass (such as tying together a fire bundle, or a smudge stick). I've used yucca leaves before for small woven trinkets, and had some success twisting together short pieces of string out of the fibers. My guess would be that grease or some other lubricant would make your cord more likely to unravel if you twisted it, and none of the natural fiber ropes I've bought or used have ever been treated thus.

Stryver
 
My favorite is yucca. I think yucca is the strongest and easiest to use. its usable inner fibers can be exposed by doing the following:

-scrape the outer covering from both sides of the leaf (if the leaf is dry, first soak it until it is supple).
-work the inner fibers loose by rubbing the leaf between your fingers.

The fiberous strands can then be used to make your cordage.

------------------
Greg Davenport
http://www.ssurvival.com
Are You Ready For The Challenge?
Are You Ready To Learn The Art Of Wilderness Survival?

 
My favorite Yucca.
You can use the fibers to braid and you can
take the black needle tip and make a slight
cut on one side just under the black tip
then strip the needle donw one side and pull
the fibers with the tip adn use it to sew with.



------------------
http://www.imt.net/~goshawk
Don't walk in tradition just because it feels good!!!!!
Romans 10:9,10
Hebrews 4:12-16
Psalm 91

 
Thanks for the quick replies.

Stryver,
I was thinking about some kind of viscous/thick material that would exactly prevent unraveling (bees wax or pine pitch). Pine pitch or keratin (hide, talon, horn) does certainly work when you want to fix things with thread. Arrowhead for example. Moreover, it might protect thread from damp rotting.

Greg and Goshawk,
The yuccas I met in Arizona had rather short leaves. However I saw marvelous ropes made by natives in the museum. I even tried to chew on it as they did to make it more plyable but was not too successful.

In response to Stryver's point on the rather short cordage he made, I would opt for longer fibers if possible. Compared to the yuccas I have seen mainly, the local milkweeds are giants and even with my unexperienced hand I could get a ~30 cm piece out of one plant. I haven't seen nettle yet here in the US but it is annoyingly common at creek sides in EU. It is relatively easy to collect ~1m specimens. Just look for damp soil. But I have never tried to make rope out of it but rather avoided or just wacked through (not fun).

Do you have some experience with these plants?

Thanks again,

HM

 
I meant to say glue not keratin in my post.
Sorry,

HM

Mistakes, mistakes.....
 
I assume we are talking about vegetable fibers. Put me on the Yucca team (I can't find any wild hemp
smile.gif
). For general information, you can make cordage of any length from almost any length fiber. I have a great rope I use that I made from my dog's fur, harvested during brushing.

It is a matter of intertwining new fibers as you progress up the cord.

BTW, the word braiding is often used but true braiding reduces the strength of the fibers. For example of you have 100 4 inch fibers and pull till they break they will break at "X" pounds. After braiding they will break at @ ".5X"

Rope is made with the counter twist method and because of friction issues etc will break at a higher number say "1.5X". We did a lot of work with this when I was teaching at the University. Several of my materials students actually wrote papers on it.

We cover the process using cattail leaves in the "Primitive Weapons video".

Ron

------------------
Learn Life Extension at:

http://www.survival.com ]

[This message has been edited by Doc Ron (edited 01-17-2000).]
 
I prefer dogbane. Very strong and when cleaned and sofetened it is like silk. I make small cords all the time out of it and find it hard to beat for strength for a native plant here in Idaho. In the midwest, hemp and velvetleaf where the best I could find outside of basswood.
 
I have two favorites. Tulip popular for small fine string and hickory bark for strong rope.
Hickory takes less than five minutes from the time you cut it off the tree limb until you can use it. Hickory is by far the best local plant material for bow drill strings.
 
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