Wood Nettle Cordage Using the Reverse Wrap Method

Description

How to use the reverse wrap method to make natural cordage with wood nettle. Includes how to reverse wrap, how to splice, and how to ID wood nettle stalks.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Wood nettle,nettle,Survival Skills (TV Genre),natural cordage,natural string,natural rope,splicing,useful plants

Video Transcription

today we're gonna learn about making cordage using wood metal fiber and specifically we're gonna use the reverse wrap method so let's take a look at what the plants that we're gonna use these are the winter stalks of wood metal in the summer you're gonna find huge colonies of these in The Woodlands stinging nettle has narrow leaves or wouldn't at all has broader leaves probably the size of of a human hand these are tough to spread out without breaking them up but you can hopefully see a little bit that we're not dealing with a long narrow lance like leaf like you would find on stinging nettle a very close relative

in the winter is the prime time to harvest these in the summer you can still see some of the ridge residual spikes on here in the summer these have wicked wicked spikes twice as as mean as a stinging nettle but here in the winter they're not going to hurt us even though you can see see them there on the stem cell I just pull from the bottom and up comes a stock this is amazingly easy to harvest this time of the year just break it in half that's going to separate the fibers you can grab the fibers on one end pull and you'll get a really nice long string of fiber here's the ones on the other side just like that I've got a nice handful of fibers to use there are many other fiber plants out there but I prefer the wood metal for a number of reasons first of all it's really easy to harvest in the winter like this a couple minutes and I've got a nice bundle that's ready to be made into reverse-wrap cordage second of all it's really strong stuff which I'll get to show you at the end of the video especially after we've used that reverse wrap method to strengthen it and create a really really nice strong piece of cordage so this part I'm going to show you point of view so that it's really easy for you to follow along and do your own reverse rap again you can use any natural fiber that you want a milkweed works really well I know in the South there's all kind of yucca and all kinds of really great fibers that we don't have here in the North dogbane which we have here in the north is one that's often used and makes a really nice cordage but again nothing like wood nettle at least in my opinion so first of all I want to separate these out to try to get two pieces that are about equal in width so you can see the one on the left is a little bit too thick I'm going to take some of it off once I have okay once I have to that I feel are pretty much the same wet I'm gonna begin reverse wrapping and here's how we do it I'm gonna start at one end of my fibers gonna take these and I'm gonna pinch them to hold them together you can't see it it's off-camera I'm gonna lick my fingers keep them nice and wet so it's easy to grab this bottom one I'm going to twist that towards myself and then I'm gonna bring it towards me and over the top my finger and thumb move forward to pinch I take the new bottom one I roll it towards me and then I bring it towards me and over the top when I say I roll it towards me when I take this bottom one what I mean is I'm taking it and the top of it is coming towards me so I'm going counterclockwise if I would look at it face on over the top move my finger forward and pinch one thing to remember is that if one of your strands starts to get too thin where you get to the end of one of your strands you can splice in new cordage and I'll show you how to do that let's say I've been going along for a while not really paying attention and suddenly I noticed that my top one is really thick my bottom one is really thin

well here's what I do I take an extra piece and see this dart one that I'm bringing in I'm going to add it to my thinner piece of cord and it's tail can just stick right out no problem then those two the thin one and the one I've added I'm gonna treat I'm licking my fingers again I'm gonna treat as one so I'm gonna roll it towards me roll it over the top towards me over the top what I've done is even these out so that they're about equal again and then I just keep going that's splice later on I can just bite or cut off that little tail in and if I've done it nice and tightly

I won't lose too much integrity in my piece of cordage eventually this will get into you so it becomes really easy to do and you can just work your way along

the final review before I show you how strong this is I keep licking my fingers just so it's easier to grab especially out here in the cold where it's kind of dry rolling this one towards me in this direction my thumb you can see is rolling towards me and then goes over the top so I'm reaching around with these fingers pinching completing the wrap these fingers thumb and forefinger finger come up and pinch it I let go the bottom one my thumb comes towards me bring it over the top so what we've actually done is taking these fibers fibers and rolled them against each other so that they hold themselves unlike leg rolled cordage for instance which is much faster this holds itself in place you don't even have to tine and knot

so here it is about a foot long got one splice over here if it's gonna break that's probably our most likely place let's see what happens good and strong and indeed it broke right at that splice you can see it did survive a number of those really nice jerky pulls I think for a piece of fiber that is this thick it's pretty darn good lucky didn't notice how fine these fibers are they're really amazing fibers that are quite beautiful kind of white and silken and each one of those little fibers is quite strong when it's wrapped up we really have a nice piece of cordage last thing I'd like to do here is help you create a search image so that you can see the wood metal in the winter it's these ghosty leaved things some right up here this so if you go out in your woodlands and these are in your area

you're gonna see these this time of the year and typically they've retained some leaves like this and so they're a dry stalk with those kind of thick ghost-like leaves hanging on them again you usually find them in a colony like this to further identify them look for those little jab e's on there those little thorns probably can see those right along the edge they're against my fingers those aren't gonna hurt you now those are what gives such a nice nice sting in the summer but again that would further identify this as a nettle really nice shot right there away finally to make sure that you've got the right stuff just break it in half and you should find that really nice fiber that pulls right out it's already gonna be strong and it's only gonna be stronger when you use that reverse wrap method to create some nice cordage with it so head out in the woods see if you can find some of those it's great to work with in that reverse-wrap cordage method those slow you can sit around the campfire and just

do it habitually and you'll have a nice supply of natural cordage always at your disposal