TOMBELAINE wrote on Jun 9^th, 2020 at 12:24pm:


So far it is turning out much better than I expected. Easy, it just takes patience to remove as much of the green stuff.
I think the nettles here are of good stock.
In about 2 weeks time I will post my sling 

Kick wrote on Jun 9^th, 2020 at 4:27pm:


Actually I don't mind the short fibres. After cleaning it up most of my fibres are maybe 25 cm max.
I roll them on my pants. Then I roll them into the twine, than I roll the twine around itself doing the twisty thing, than I twist the twisty thing around itself. Very strong.

I also stopped crushing the stems, I just debark them with my finger nails. The nettles here are strong and thick. I do ocassionally get stung. And I run over the greeny bits with a butter knife on a smooth rubber mat, this seems to reduce the fibres breaking when cleaning them with the butter knife.I try to make the fibres as white as possible but there is some greenery left. Will see how it turns out.

Kick wrote on Jun 9^th, 2020 at 4:45pm:


Also, I cut the nettle as low as possible to the root. Where the root is, the pit is almost made of wood. There the outer bark with the fibres lets loose easily. You can make the start.
First I run over it with some gloves to remove the leaves and stings.
Then I use my nails to debark, starting at the thickest bottom section. Get as much as possible, than slowly pull it all together downards till u get to the first node. At the node, pull slowly but with a lot of torgue so it doesn't break at the nodes, but as you continue pulling the outer skin downwards, it will get less and less because some of the outer skin gets stuck at the nodes. It's not so big a deal though. You might peel those off after and add it to the bunch or try to take them as you go.

Well 2m of twine a day is unrealistic unless you really were dedicated, yesterday I did 1m and today I did about 80cm.
So it's going to take me about 20 days give or take before I have enough for a decent sling.

In the mean time I like to use the leftofers to make nettle tea, tastes pretty decent 

Archaic Arms wrote on Jun 10^th, 2020 at 9:43pm:



The sling Primitive Technology made is not good and no what I aspire mine to be. It's made too quickly with too rough fibres. Those knots near at the ends of pouch will not give a clean release. But a good try.

I do a two ply twine and this twine I will twist around itself into a thicker two ply and maybe another time. I will weave the pouch with a twine from the first step ( the thinnest )

Here are the beginnings of a nettle sling, with a diameter of around 5-6mm. As you can see, there is still some greenery in this cord.
This is plenty strong, but I decided to take more patience and now let the stems dry out in the sun, before I will continue.

I am very pleased by how it is going to far, this cord is very supple and has a nice feel to it and it doesn't stretch much. However, it is not as refined yet as I can make it. I am 100% confident a very decent sling can be made from it, at least to the standards of store bought jute, maybe that of store bought hemp, probably better if you really get high purities.

I made a sling out of the nettles I had so far

Here's some new thoughts on using nettles

-  Dry the stems in a bundle in the sun for a few weeks before using them
-  Once dried split them in halve with your nail or knife, now you can easily crack out the pit from the fibre
- The fibres are now plenty strong, you don't need to process them any further except twist them into rope

This is the quickest method. If you have good nettles (bigger the better imo) and they have dried for a few weeks, you can then process the fibre easily and if you spend 5/6 hours or so you can easily get 10 meters of decent thickness twine that can be twisted into a sling in a matter of a few hours.

Processing wet nettles and their fibre takes a lot more time and is not something I am gonna do again, better to let them dry.