Lime bark cordage fibers. TUTORIAL

[jon r]

Go and collect a long piece of lime wood about the width of your fist at the base with as little knotts as possible.

I wouldnt cut down a single lime tree. This wood was taken from a bunch of shoots around where there were large fallen lime trees. Cut theought the base of the wood as cleanly as possible at a diagonal. (cutting at a slant will stop rain water etc resting on top of the cut and will reduce the chances of the tree catching disesaes etc. Its a good idea to do this when cutting any wood from a tree.)

cut throught the bark in a line down the lenght of the wood.

Start to peel back the bark. It will ploberbly be very hard to do with just your hands becuase the bark is so strong. Make a tool called a 'Spud' to help you (a chisel shaped piece of wood)

When the bark is totally removed from the wood put it in a slow moving stream for 2 weeks or more. Make sure it is totally submerged. i used sticks to hold it beneith the water. While you are waiting make a canoe

After 2 weeks of the bark being ion the stream the layers of bark may have seperated enough. The bark will stink too! It will proberbly be covered in slime and various creatures may have made their home in your bark. Simply rub off the slime with your hands, some of you proberbly wont find this a pleasent job buy just get on with it!

Seperate the layers of bark out and hang up to dry. You can scrap the outer bark, it wont be good for much. The inner fabers are the strongest! stronger than nettle fibers i think!

This is one layer of bark and is so thin you can practically see through it. It reminds me of greasy chip shop paper

When the fibers dry they become nice and soft ad are ideal for cordage making. Because the fibers are long you dont need to introduce new fibers as often when making cordage so the final cord will be stronger!

Happy cordage making!



Article by Jonathan Ridgeon

 

[Biddlesby]

Great stuff, when I did this I used a pretty old piece of lime lying around on the floor, and it worked fine, so I guess it is not necessary to chop off living limbs, although I guess it would probably make better cordage, and lime grows pretty fast anyway.

 

[JonnyP]

Nice one Jon.....Wish the rep points were still working, you do a great service to this site...
Only thing is....What does a lime tree look like....?

 

[jon r]

do you all need to know what a Lime Tree looks like then?

 

[Mirius]

Well I think I know, but it would be a good extra to add into the tutorial, which was otherwise excellent - thanks!

 

[Singeblister]

thanks for that I have some sitting in a bucket in the garden right now been wanting to try it for a while

 

[Snufkin]

Nice tutorial . And don't forget lime wood is great for carving too.

 

[Jodie]

do you all need to know what a Lime Tree looks like then?

Hehe, first catch your lime

It's one of the few trees I think I can recognise all year round - largely because I know
that the tree by one of my bus stops is one and I keep my beadies on its annual
progress. They seem to have a keenness for growing more leaves than every other
tree.

 

[Seoras]

Would be a great tutorial Jon if I could see the pictures. Must be the Firewall at my work. I get to see most pictures but for some reason not all.

One thing else to add to this is what to do if you do not have access to a stream.

I got round this by putting the fresh Lime strips in a large plastic container, adding water, then a good handful of straw and covering it over. I left it for a month outside giving it an occasional stir. The straw I think helps increase the bacterial level in the water and so helping to ret the Lime bark down.

After a month the Lime gave of its usual smell and was very easy to strip down into workable fibres. The cordage I produced from this was just as good as using a stream.

Cheers

George

 

[jon r]

Would be a great tutorial Jon if I could see the pictures. Must be the Firewall at my work. I get to see most pictures but for some reason not all.

One thing else to add to this is what to do if you do not have access to a stream.

I got round this by putting the fresh Lime strips in a large plastic container, adding water, then a good handful of straw and covering it over. I left it for a month outside giving it an occasional stir. The straw I think helps increase the bacterial level in the water and so helping to ret the Lime bark down.

After a month the Lime gave of its usual smell and was very easy to strip down into workable fibres. The cordage I produced from this was just as good as using a stream.

Cheers

George

Cheers for that! i didnt know about the use of straw! Great advice! I only had a running stream because of all this rain so i may have to use that technique in the future! Thanks very much!!