Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => English Warbow => Topic started by: Phil Rees on May 25, 2010, 07:56:46 pm
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I've set aside about an acre of land to let the abundant nettles grow. I'll harvest them in mid September and drop them into a retting pond for six months or so and tease out the fibres once the outer has rotted off. I have a friend who hand spins wool and she's kindlly agreed to spin the fibres into yarn.
It all sound very simple.
Has anyone ever tried making cordage from nettle fibres? ... if so what advice would you give.
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wow, thats gonna be a lot of nettle... ive never done it, but there some growing behind my house now im thinking of harvesting soon
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I've set aside about an acre of land to let the abundant nettles grow. I'll harvest them in mid September and drop them into a retting pond for six months or so and tease out the fibres once the outer has rotted off. I have a friend who hand spins wool and she's kindlly agreed to spin the fibres into yarn.
It all sound very simple.
Has anyone ever tried making cordage from nettle fibres? ... if so what advice would you give.
Sounds an interesting project Horace; I wonder if nettle fibre compares well to linen? One thing is certain, it's a crop that won't require much maintenance! ;) Would be nice to obtain full-length hemp fibres wouldn't it?
Regards, Dave
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I am no expert on nettle but six months sounds like an awful long time. Have you studied up on nettle specificaly. I have made one string from nettle and it is as good if not stronger than linen. I soaked mine for about 7 days if I remember correctly and they seem to strip down pretty nicely. I had someone else actually spin the fibers for me. Steve
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if you get an acre worth of nettle, and get it spun, youd have lots and lots of cordage. ill take a bit! >:D
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There are several people on other forumns that can and have made bowstrings from nettle. James Parker come to mind. Send him a PM, he is probably one of the most knowledgeable. Bill
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On another site, I asked about nettle bow string and had a nice chat with a lady who is the yarn/twine/string/cordage maker for a group of Scottish Heritage people at a heritage site village (i.e. she does it for a living).
She has said that only about 1-2% of the mass of nettle will actually be suitable for spinning into good thread, which can then be plyed up to make bow string.
She advocates stripping off the leaves and small branches, setting aside until the leaves start to wilt, splitting the stalks into four by flattening twice lengthwise, then retting in damp grass for a day or two. (keep in mind this is in England, where it is often wet). Point is, she said that the plant material can rot very quickly destroying the fibers. She said sometimes only a day or two is needed to ret the plant material away from the fibers.
Then, after retting, she takes bundles of stalks and works them in her hands under running water to "wash" away all the material that isn't good fiber. There is a "skin" that is attached to the fibers that will flake off when the cordage is dry, thus loosening the weave. You need to get rid of all those little bits before making the string for a good strong string. Then after that, she spins her threads, then adds them together to get a much stronger cord.
Hope this helps.
Edit - I found an excerpt from one of her posts regarding spinning nettle:
"Spin it damp like flax but don't leave it damp, it grows moldy very quickly. If you've kept the fibres in bundles or broken it out like flax it ought to be already lined up for spinning. If not, you can draw out lengths from the smashed stems to make a strick. Short lengths card well. The thing is that flax will give you about 12% fibre from dry weight of material but nettle will only give 1 or 2%. So you need a *lot*. Thereafter it's much the same. Cut, stack, dry out a bit, bundle and soak until it starts to decay then dry and beat or break out the fibres. (easier if you wrap them in a clean cloth). If you're in a hurry, cut the stems, strip the leaves and then pour boiling water over the stems. Walk up and down over them or beat them with rounded stick to seperate the skins from the woody core. Peel off the lengths and again soak to encourage retting, sometimes even a day can be enough....be careful watch out for a powdery mildew forming on the damp stems.
At this point it gets fiddly because you have no core to act as a stiffened length to break out the fibres. However, if you keep the lengths in bundles you can twist them in water until the detritus comes away and the fibres come out clean. Nettle fibres may break at the leaf nodes, unlike flax which carries it's leaves v.high and on unbranched stems, it's a knack to remove the leaves without compromising the 'skin' of the nettle. However even short fibre is still good stuff. Vigorous combing to remove debris only suceeds in breaking up the fibres too. Better to hold the retted bundle under running water and gently work your fingers through the lengths allowing the water to 'comb' the fibres free. This avoids snarls and gives excellent fine fibres in good workable lengths.
"
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Bill, Diligence , many many thanks for your imput. Your comments and advice are most welcome and I'll take them all on board and use them. I now know the retting time I was considering is way too long and I'll bring that down to around seven to ten days.....
So thanks guys for all your comments and advice ... it's really, really appreciated.
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Id like to see ur nettle patch if u can put up a pic?
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Horace, this sounds like a great project. Have you considered learning to spin yourself? I may be wrong, but I don't think the mechanical spinning wheel existed in the medieval period, but the hand spindle did, and dates back thousands of years. I spend the weekend taking my first steps in learning to spin flax fibers using a hand spindle. Lots of fun, if frustrating, too.
Dane
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Id like to see ur nettle patch if u can put up a pic?
Sure can..... if someone will tell me how to transfer a picture from my laptop to this thread? HELP
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when you reply to the thread, look on the bottom left side..."additional options" - click that. See where it says, "attach"? Click the "browse" button. search for and find the photo on you computer, and click okay. That's it. Now keep in mind that your photo must be 200 kb or smaller. hope that helps.
J
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Yes like diligencw said! I think I have a nettle patch by my house and would be interesting in trying it as well.
Russ
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Let's see if this works...
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Here's another seeing as the last picture worked
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:o :o :o that is a lot of nettle. send any scraps my way >:D
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If I was in short pants, I would want to stay far away from that patch. Bill
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:o :o :o that is a lot of nettle. send any scraps my way >:D
...be delighted to....
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I took a look at them today, and I think I'll leave them for another week or so before I harvest them because the leaves are still quite green. I have an old bath tub we use for watering the horses, I'll be using that as a rettin tub
.... so far so good ...
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Alrighty! Will be following this for sure. Tryed my hand once at retting nettle, but I didn't wait long enough.
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I spent quite a long time experimenting with nettle strings last year. My problem was after retting I tried to get rid of the 'rubbish' by combing with a metal comb. As mentioned above all than did was snap the fibers. Even with very short fibers I still managed to make some strong strings. I've been waiting for them all year for them to be ready to harvest and now that i've seen the above info I can't wait! They don't sting if you just grab em....honest
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"They don't sting if you just grab em....honest"
Ho ho ho, really!?! :) Those things sting me if I just hink about em. I've worn gloves and long sleaves AND just grab em AND go up the stalk like they say if you do it won't sting, and STILL get stung the crap out of me. You know they got certain species of nettle in other countrys that can kill you from gettin stung? Ya, about how to process, I tryed combing em too like flax and it did not work at all. I tryed stripping the fibers green and letting em dry, but that did not work at all either. So when they are done water retting will the pure fibers just separate with the other material? Do you have any experience/knowledge on field retting? That's what I wanna try...
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Just a thought, but Google books search may have some useful info on this?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&tbs=bks%3A1&q=retting+nettle&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&tbs=bks%3A1&q=retting+nettle&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)
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I had another look at the harvest today, they're still a little green so I'll leave them for about another two weeks .... in the mean time ...
I've spoken to acouple of people who've been involved in hand making linen from flax. They're reccommendation is that I treat the nettles as if they were flax. This means I have to make one or two bits of equipment.
First I have to make a "crusher".. imagine a old style paper cutting guillotine but with a blunt wooden blade. The dried retted stalks are crushed to break up the outer woody bark without damaging the internal fibres ...
Next I need to make a "scutcher or scutching knife" ... this is along flat wooden blade that's used to beat the stalks against a "scutching board" and remove the outer woody stem.
Finally I need to make a series of "hackles to comb out the fibres. The hackles are wooden blocks with nail teeth over which the fibres are drawn to comb out the fibres. I have to make a series of hackles with finer and finer teeth to give me a fine fibre that can be spun on a hand wheel.
So it's off to the workshop for a day or two.
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This allsounds like fun but I'm a visual learner. ??? Picks??youtube?? You guys are describing skills I need to learn.
Keep it coming.
Jay
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I just finished retting a big bundle of nettles-left them out in the grass for a week, flipped them and left them for another week. I'm letting them dry, and I'm going to try the same process as they use on flax. I've made cordage from nettles by splitting the stems and stripping the fibers off, but I wanted to try making a big mass of raw fiber and spinning it with a drop spindle.
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The nettle harvest is in .....
Spent most of this morning gathering in my crop of nettles. Because I had so much material to choose from, I was able to be very selective. I only chose the stems that were as tall as me (6 feet) and had no signs of damage. I particularly chose stems that had large diameters and still had a little showing of green leaf at the top. I hand pulled the stems and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised as to how easy they came out of the ground. I tied the stems into 5 kilo bundles and finished with 20 bundles.
So... I have around 100 kilos of nettle stems, a very rough estimate is that it will make around 1.5 kilo's of fibre. When the fibre is spun, it should make about 80 to 100 meters of yarn of 0.5mm diameter. The plan now is Rett the stems down by immersing them in an old bath tub of water, after they've been left to begin the decomposition process by laying them in some long wet grass for about a week.
I'll start taking photographs for those who want to see them ..... but for the time being, good old mother nature has begun the transformation process from nettle to bow string
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Looking forward to seeing your progress!
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I took a look yesterday, everything seems to be progressing just fine ..... but .... if your thinking of having a go at this be prepared for the SMELL Boy oh boy what a stink.
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By now you should have lots of fibers and have started spinning them into thread? Bill
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By now you should have lots of fibers and have started spinning them into thread? Bill
Hi Bill .... not quite.
Some of the nettles have rotted to the extent that they fell apart into a mush. However... I edged my bets a little and placed some bundles of nettles in wet long grass. these seem to have retted perfectly. The outer woody layer is now black and rubs off with your fingers, so I'll be laying this down in the barn over this weekend to dry.
So it should all now be moving onto the next phase.
Photo's to follow