I work with flat reed a lot.
This is the cheapest place I have found to buy it:
http://www.springfedorganics.com/rattan_reed.htm
This is what Mark is looking for:
Flat Splint Reed
Made from the core of the rattan plant.
Rattan facts.
So what is rattan? Raw rattan grows in the rain forest. Its favorite location is in what forestry guys tend to call secondary forest, where the trees are fairly young and a lot of light penetrates to the forest floor. Unlike bamboo, which grows almost like a tree, rattan is a creeping plant that closely resembles the stem of a rose. It grows from the forest floor, using the trees to climb upward, and is typically harvested by the rattan farmers when it is 2 years old.
Rattan is great for a sustainable development project because the local farmers actually plant rattan in gardens, and the rattan needs trees to grow. These gardens are between 5 to 12 acres and typically yield around 1.3 metric tons of rattan every couple of years. Because the trees are left standing when rattan is harvested, the raw material can be classified as a non-forest product.
Harvesting rattan, one machete chop at a time.
The first step in the rattan product development process is harvesting. This is labor-intensive and is typically carried out by teams of villagers, who take turns harvesting their gardens with other local farmers helping out. To watch the farmers cut and strip the rattan of its thorny outer layer is pretty amazing. These guys climb the trees, get out their machetes and then start hacking away only its not really hacking. It requires great skill to first cut the rattan and then, with a secondary blow, split off the outer layer and peel out the core rattan.
Once the rattan has been harvested from the garden, it has to be prepared before it can be used in weaving, furniture making or any other rattan-based craft. The first step is to wash the rattan in the river to remove any stains and clean the product, stripping away the layer of silica that tends to coat the core rattan.
The next step is to cure the rattan, turning its color from a pale green into the yellow that most people are familiar with by smoking it in sulfur fumes. The raw, washed rattan is loaded into what looks like a wood-framed tent that has its floor about a foot off the ground. Many bushels of raw rattan are piled on top of one another until the wooden frame is full. The frame is then covered with tarpaulin, which is secured to the ground using stone weights. The sulfur is ignited and placed under the tent, and the smoking process begins. It usually takes about a day or so to complete this curing and smoking process.
After curing, the rattan has to be dried to remove excess moisture and make the product suitable for use. This is done outside under the hot equatorial sun, and takes perhaps another two or three days to complete.
After drying, the rattan is ready for use. It can further be processed into peel for weaving, or core products that are flexible and used for binding and craft materials.
