Making String

by bam

Take plant or animal fibre and make a usable cord with your hands, and learn why it holds: each twist runs against the last, and friction between fibres does the rest. The course follows the U.S. Army's own public survival and rigging manuals for the hand method, and federal agriculture and forestry publications for the fibres: retting, breaking, scutching and hackling hemp and flax; working dogbane, yucca, bark and sinew by hand. It visits the spindle, the twister and the Charlestown Navy Yard ropewalk, a building 1,325 feet long. It reads the evidence for very old string, including a three-ply cord on a Neanderthal flake and a disputed claim about ancient flax, taught as a dispute. It ends by reading a bought rope: its fibre, its construction, what a rating is and who sets one, and how to inspect it. This course never gives a safe working load, and it holds one rule of its own: hand-made cord is never load-bearing for people. It is the first course in the From Fiber to Fabric series, and it links throughout to Knot-Tying & Rope Work, which defines rope where this course makes it.