How To Make Natural Cordage From Willow Bark

hey guys hey this is Ed from seven balls I hope you're having an awesome day so today I'm joined with a good friend of mine mark who is a member of the team a wilderness pioneers mark how you doing very good thinking okay so looking a look a little dapper with his hat I feel like really our place that was up let's get half so mark is probably gonna be the first time you see them on video on my channel here at set outdoors now if you've been watching a previous series that I've been doing on natural cordage making you would have seen the head instructor months so mark is part of the team here in Oxford at wilderness PI it is and what Mark is currently doing is taking out some time to show me and allow me to record this process to share with you guys or make a natural cordage from willow yes okay so I've seen it still on video I've never seen it being done in person so I'm really looking forward to seeing this just as much as you are so in this video we're going to talk through the various steps involved so hopefully I can go away my bushcraft Basecamp and replicate is myself and hopefully helps some of you guys at home so with your kind permission mark what we'll do we'll begin so we found a piece of willow that we litter sound behind I want to get behind a camera a mark is going to show me and yourselves how to mount natural cordage using willow so mark we're at this willow tree right now so we're going to talk about all to the condition this particular willow trees in isn't it absolutely yeah so this particular trees had some storm damage as we can see this branch this bow has fallen down so we're going to harvest an odd branch of this further down because it's still attached it means that we this this horizontal bow is going to get some Sun shoots growing off of it so in a couple of years we'll get some nice vertical small shoots coming through so so just a lot of define exactly what you mean there so essentially it's going to go out of this branch upwards yes yeah we're oh is really good for for being able to to grow when it's damaged so one of the things that you can do with work with willow is to cut off some side shoots and just stick it into damp ground and it will often take with no further treatment at all that's how they wait make willow copies for basket absolutely yeah yeah yep absolutely so in a in a couple of years we should have with fingers crossed we should have a line of small shoots here the Sun shoots they're just called Sun shoots because servant because they hit to the Sun as quickly as they can and and therefore grow fairly vertically and we'll be able to make some some baskets with that in a few years perfect so the point here being guys and obviously we've mentioned this before the natural cordage making videos is you're obviously don't go around hacking at trees to kind of remove any kind of like materials or whatever specially living it's all just you've got to be harvested properly so obviously this has been damaged and we're going to take in a small limb and obviously we're we load the I guess the key factor is the resilience of it you know so even by taking a small piece off it was still kind of grow back in abundance so let's hold on over for that section over there and we'll take that off some art this is also still part of that fallen branch so we're obviously going to be picking a small piece now what people were going to be going for so we've got a variety to choose from here I think what we'll do - we've got a nice suitable piece here that's that's a meter or so long I think we'll cut it here and then we'll we'll cut it a bit further up so we in terms of natural cordage making and using willow are you looking for things like branches coming out and things like that not what not yeah it makes it easier if you can have a straight section rather than branches okay sorry branches coming out this one is fairly clean from this joint here and there's a bit of a knot there but and then up about a metre or so and there's a small branch that comes out that underneath your camera might be here to pick up perfect so we're going to sort this off now so we saw this off [Music] go and then I'll I'm going to have to crash through this bit a little bit try not to do too much damage so could you be working with wider diameter pieces as well absolutely yeah yeah yeah you just create more more willow more work to do to take it so the side shoot is coming off at this point you're I'm gonna cut just here just this side of it so that the piece that we've got this is fairly smooth profit so mark here we have to paste them yep so this is the piece we'll we'll take that back to base camps and prep that perfect so remark the back at base camps also next step now now that we would prove that piece of willow to work with so we've harvested this piece of wood we can see that it's going to the bark is going to appeal quite nicely by the look of it but before we do that we need to take the outer bark off bark is made out of two layers and we need to remove this outer protective layer so that it reveals the nice succulent bit that we want to make our cottage from Perth place and what process is always going to use them so we just take the back of a knife and we can just scrape it really so we're trying to remove as much of this green as we can and we just go around the whole thing scraping what we can get that lot rocks so in weather there's obviously a climate of a year so I'd really be harvesting it for cordage so yes the the time to take this is when the SAP is is flowing well so that the the bark the inner bark separates from the core wood so now you just think enough to remove back of the gray essentially yeah yeah so the green is just the protective layer of the bark doesn't really have any huge amounts of properties that we want to have for the the cordage making gets in the way gets a bit crumbly and so on so we're just trying to get it so that we can you've got this access to this nice stuff below some our comity you removed it for most of it you're approaching the end there and some actually we were just talking off-camera and I thought it it's important to show on camera is you're approaching or not how you kind of tackle that so these these blemishes and knots and so on they can be a real pain because the fibers go all over the place so you can either persevere and just try and and take the thing off or you can you can kind of take it off and it means that you end up with a bit of a hole in there in the fibers but you know it's it's easier to do that I think okay especially this close to the end of the end of the piece we're only going to lose two or three inches right perfect so so same as before take the year the green off as much as you can and then just take a load of this did naughty stuff off because we're quite quite close to the end I don't need to worry about making it neat and tidy the other direction [Music] I'm just going to pull that through if this were further down then I would I would make it a nice neat absolutely didn't tear when I took it off watching the way around but I'm not going to worry about that and then we just carry on round really so mark so you've obviously taken all that off now with a knife also next step in the process so the next step is to remove the outer part of the inner bark rather and there are several ways that you can do this sometimes you can just get your fingers underneath and just gently prise it up and it will lift sometimes you need a little tool to help you do that and at all this is the tool it's a little wedge just cut out of any old stick it's called a spud and it's just used in just to lift it up slightly slide down here and and then that just lifts up if I turn that you can see and then just by using that that lever that wedge just helps lift it right out so if you were to do this from solid coming back to what we discussed earlier at different time of year yeah there won't be as much that'll be indeed yeah what happens is that the the inner bark sticks to the to the to the wood central wood and it's always it can be a real pig to get it to to lift like this this is quite nice and soft so it's working fairly well and I'm just edging my way around this is where we get the issue with the knots that I was talking about earlier so by cutting this bit off it means that you have to be a little bit careful but it doesn't get all caught up what can happen is that it it ends up getting all tied up around here gotcha and and you end up tearing it so by cutting it you lose some but it means that it's not going to tear and you're not going to ruin the rest of it so we'll just if I can do this with my pens this is really nice and wet so this is coming off quite well so there's a little bit of a sticky point there so I'm going to use the spud for that [Music] so this is where we have these knots in a bit of a pain if we're close there we go cut out a beautiful piece let's come off really well wouldn't it so mark we've got a beautiful piece that we have on this yeah yeah this has come off really well so the next stage is to we need to boil this up in some water and an ash solution and to do that the easiest way really is to is to tear it into strips so that we can we can get it in the pot easier and we've got to tear it into strips anyway to make it into the cordage so we might as well do it now so this should tear fairly easily lengthways we just take it down with the grain let it do its own thing in terms of things the width of it what are you looking at as it were what is that even further well yeah when we when we actually do the the Cordish part then we will but in the moment just in terms of getting it into her into the pot and so that we can you can coil it easily to get it in the pot and make sure that it it all stays boiling away nicely we'll just put it into manageable chunks really so what are you doing that we can just touch on the topic of the boiling so by boiling what are we actually doing here point with the a solution so the it puts a lye solution in and which helps preserve the that the bark and changes the composition of it breaks down the protein breaks down the protein and it it means that it makes a much stronger bark portage so all broken up into strips and now we've torn it into strips and just to make it easier to put it into the into the boiling we're just going to sort of wrap it up a little bit so that the the ends don't will fly out when you open the lid of the pot really more than anything else just makes it manageable so mark report yeah shin yeah you say we've got some action and coals in there giving it a bit of a mix-up is that particular amount of actually it's gotta be coming in or how kind of as much as you can right um yeah the more the more that's in there the better obviously there's a limit which you because you can't fit the saturation yeah yeah if you can't fit the back in then it you've gone too far so you gonna let this bowl now or don't know we're going to put the bark in okay and then we're going to bring it to the boil and boil it for a bit put those next we may well add some more coals and some more rationing a bit but I wanted to be able to get this in first give it a bit of a stir so what point do we add the chili Enterprise our onions where we need to let this settle first and then and then the rest of it will go in in a bit this is normally Mounties cooking so mark I notice you put us funk on top is just to weigh it down so yeah we have some of this the twists of the bark was sticking out of the water so you can either add more water but then that means that it dilutes the life solution and you need to add more as the ash the other option is to push it down below the water level so we just grabbed a stone just to weight it down a little bit we'll put the lid on now and then that will gently cook away for an hour or so so we're going to basically leave this now once you cover it yeah yeah well we'll get it to boil and we'll we'll boil it for an hour or two and to see how it looks so mark this was obviously left on the fire for a while yeah to cook we also have the stone on top to weigh it down yeah so we boiled it up for for a while we've we've taken it off and we've let it cool down so let's have a look see what we go did you remember to have a salt and pepper ah that's what's missing in Italy difficulties blown guys and start again so so this rock still warm actually takes a nice colour so this is our our bark so there's bits in here it feels a bit gritty so I think what we'll do is we'll take it all out of here put some clean water through and then give it a rinse column then that will get rid of these the lumpy bits because that won't be very good in the cordage and it bits of grains of sand and dirt stuff that will potentially that could that could weaken the cordage gotcha um so we'll we'll give that a rinse and then and split this up into thinner pieces that are suitable for for transferring into cordage right so I'm going to enter this out then so yep we'll take all this lot out [Music] try and just take the bark rather than all the other bits and bobs go on stay [Music] that's right let's get rid of this so mark all cleaned out yep so we've got some clean water in here now so we'll just put this lock in there give it a bit of a shake get all the dirt off [Music] there we go right so this is our nice cordage that we've got now we could use if we were making fairly thick rough-and-ready kind of cordage we could use this just as is but normally you would want to have it a little bit thinner so if we you can do this in two ways you could use a knife and have a guide and do it quite precisely and and that works very well if you're looking for really nice neat cordage it works very well you can also just kind of tear it down and be a bit careful as you tear it and just kind of keep a an idea of the kind of size that you're after so just allowing the the the fibers to separate really okay so that's that's one bit that will be reasonable sort of thickness to to make a bit cordage out of so we'll hang that up just to dry a little bit there better it's better if you can allow it to dry the first time because the shrinkage the most of the shrinkage happens on that first drawing right so if you do it if you allow it to dry first you end up with more even cordage because obviously you could have one side of the cordage drying more than the other side which then means you're going to have an uneven wrap once it all dries out so we'll hang this up to dry and then we'll be will be good to go and we will then split the other bits up we'll just hang them all up and one going yep yep so get the next piece out of a bird's nest so Marvel what is driving yep yep so we've taken these out of split these down into various sizes so we'll just hang them over a branch and let them dry and so what this is what we have a roster foo and hair wig all right if you're trying to grow absolutely okay go so with this one in terms of twine and how long would you typically leave this for well I mean it's one of those how long is a piece of string in terms of yeah obviously it depends on the weather conditions and what-have-you we're in a nice summer's day and so it will take in the sunshine it'll take a couple of hours in the shade maybe four or five whatever it's until there until they're good and dry really is when you get them to come to use them you wet them again anyway so they can be they can be perfectly dry without a problem so that they will store well without starting to rot perfect so what we'll do then we'll come back in a few hours and obviously for you guys watching you just get a few seconds and we'll wait until someone who's a drawing that we can start waving Sebata pyro magic video anything it's been a while so they've now picked up some of the pieces that I've been right yep and so now it's time for waving yep so these are some of the dry bits we'll just get them damp again because it's easier to weave when they're damp we just scrunch down in so so reminder to those watching if the initial time is important subscribe yeah absolutely yep so yeah just while you're doing that then so let's say you prepared a load of these and you were going to weave a later date so basically destroyed growing part you will just leave it at that basically well yeah absolutely I tell you I'm ready to get up wave in yep indeed indeed so we'll leave those bits there so this is a Flemish twist the same way that you would make nettle cordage or or bramble cordage or whatever and you just twist get them somewhere in the middle of your your piece and Jen just twist and with wet hands it's not quite so easy just keep on twisting until the piece wants to twist around on itself and then keep twisting allow it to allow it to twist around itself and then you end up with a kink in one place like so then you just end up join your hands a little so what are you doing at your twisting so I'm just twisting both strands the same direction so for me these are going its clockwise for me and then take the next strand twist the same direction and I'm just locking it in place with my fingers just allowing them to to twist and then what happens it gets to the point where they want to wrap around each other and between my thumb my thumb and the first finger and then I just let that happen so as they as they want to twist I just let them work so you're twisting each one yep and then you're releasing the tension from your thumb yeah and allowing Vail and then twist around each other to assign each other we end up with with an hopefully a nice even twist around each other so each each strand is twisted round itself and then the to wrap around each other the object is to try and keep the tension equal on both sides and the thickness roughly equal as well otherwise you end up with the thin strand wrapping around the fact strand and you lose the strength in the in the string so when you twisted one you've kept the tension there with your fingers yep and then now turning the other yeah and then just catching up and then just encouraging that to twist and then you get to the point where it wants to stop naturally so it's then time to - twisting each individual one again so how much you know you need to twist by the force enough so this this one is just at the point of wanting to twist on itself again like we did right at the beginning so if I were to carry on that twist I can feel it wanting to twist around itself like that so just before you get to that point that's when you stop and go on to the other one and then holding these to you then just encourage that rather than twisting round itself you're you're encouraging it to twist around the other piece so mark you've approached the end of one other length yeah so we're getting towards the end of this this length it's a good idea to have have a staggered ends so that the joins which are inherently the weak part of the cordage are not both at the same place if you stagger them then you and you reduce the weakness so what we're going to do is I just take it a little bit further with this one you know obviously I'll be learning from these guys as well this cordage making so a couple little things that I found maybe you want to just kind of touch on is when you're tightening each piece is to really get it to a good point attention I realized when I was making it and this is maybe applicable to people to try it you're watching what I mean by that is in order to get a tight wave right mark is doing here when you twist in each single piece is really important to get it absolutely tight isn't it yeah not just yeah get a good twist on it almost to the point where if I use this as the demonstration so keep on twisting almost to the point where it wants to fold round on itself which is the the beginning part of the of the Flemish twist get it to that point and then that's where you hold it and go on to the next one and then when you get to that you can and then you allow the two to wrap around each other that's when you get a nice tight weave when they join together the the the fewer turns you do on each individual the more the longer each rotation is going to be so and the the less tight the twist is going to be it's going to affect obviously the strength of it yeah absolutely Liz oh yeah and also to maybe rather than twisting when to put in both cases you select the sections and twist you were revising because he was advising me to do more length in the beginning yeah yeah so obviously if you're if you're twisting this kind of length then you're going to have to twist it that much more to get to the point where you're where the thing wants to turn if you're going to twist this bit then that's at the same point there so I was only doing a third or a quarter of the amount of turns there to get to that point the difficulty is first of all it's difficult for the camera to see and and and secondly sometimes it's bends their big your hand is you might not be able to get that close to you do your bits of work you might prefer to stretch out slightly with your hands but you work that out as you do it yourself interesting so with this one now we need to weave in and so we're now ready to put in another piece so I've got a another piece here so we've amp this down as well and then obviously just by dipping it in water yeah yep just for a couple of seconds just to soften it we're not trying to saturate it we're just trying to soften it a little and so you place it along the the two so that they're alongside each other and then we just twist these two together so you do leave a bit of other leave a bit of overhang you cut that off afterwards it's not a problem so hold those two together and then you just weave the two in we do that again getting like that and then just allow those to once it's gone through a couple of times then it's back into the into the string and you're away and then just Calgon this and then you just carry on as normal I remember what I was trying this it definitely is your things that work out yeah yeah yeah you end up with cramping your fingers take breaks regularly until you used to it I think it's a good way to go and then you'll find that there are bits sticking out and what-have-you but that's absolutely fine you just go along with a knife and just chop those bits off as you need to what you can do if you're feeling really brave is just run it through the flame of the fire just to get rid of the fine hairs as well and not on your body but on the actual yeah why do you let anybody tell you if that just is right yeah I'll get a really manly video wouldn't it laughs I shall let you do that was very sexy at my base camp so we just carry on and then you just make as much as you want you can make meters and meters of the things they didn't rotate round itself so as the instructor manse mentioned in obviously a previous tutorial utility is strengthened at the same College by rubbing it around twice isn't it yeah so it's a two plus so this is the the standard two-ply what you can do is twist it keep twisting and it will want to twist around itself at that point so you just kind of see messages for penises so it's exactly the same process and you're wrapping one two strand piece around another two strand piece to make a thicker a 4-ply effectively and of course you can carry on and carry on and you can end up with something a ship's anchor you would hang off of really yeah you don't have any ships nearby I see no ships which is a nice project so it's yeah and that's that's one of the ways to to strengthen your core dish if you're making a shelter as opposed to no fishing line or something or rather something delicate then you can use some thicker cordage you could start off with thicker pieces or you can just double twist it so there you go guys that is a wrap for this video mark thank you so much pleasure the language has been lost in the entire process so here's the thing this kind of wraps up the short series that I've done with the team over at wilderness pine is about natural cordage making so hopefully you gained some value from this tutorial do let us know how you get all go out there give it a try like we stress the only one in the video be responsible how you source the materials but obviously that should really stop you from going out there and attempting this when Anna and as appropriate that you gain the materials in the right manner so like I said it's already on what is it design in a way aware obviously I'm learning in person but then obviously you guys can obviously follow the process home now obviously other people that are doing it out there will add their own little nuances and how to do it but this is how the team here do it so make sure you give it a try he never done it before and let us know how you get on now below I put a link to the previous videos that we've done with the team that wasn't as pioneers about the other aspects of natural cordage making please do go check those out also only be putting a link to Borden as pioneers Instagram profile so make sure sorry the insert YouTube channel so obviously they'll put out some fantastic videos that they're putting out quite a few videos on an ongoing basis there's really good quality of tutorials and other stuff that they've got going or one they've actually going to be pulling another primitive Basecamp so this is the first one that they built another site that you're going to start documenting another bill I'm also going to put a link to their Facebook page okay so obviously these guys are quite active over there and put a link to their website where you can find out more information about the courses and other things that they have going on any last words from you know it's been a great weekend isn't it a beautiful weekend yeah beautiful day today sunshine in yeah I need to get my cell phone with you swanky hats yeah I see it man so it was all happening here me I tell you but seriously thank you once again back there it's been absolute pleasure thank you so much these guys have been great hosts for me and being very gracious taking the time out to allow me to kind of document this process for you guys to share and see and hopefully try out yourself too so like I said please do go check out the other natural cordage videos linked to below go and check out the social media links for these guys that wilderness pioneers I'll put a link to those below as well and also let me know your thoughts down below in the description box and obviously there's a lot of other videos coming soon as well I'm looking for words of twine is myself so I've gained a lot more confidence and a lot more the process spending time with these guys that I can now go away I'm not fit the key thing here is practice isn't it absolutely sit down repetitive and over and over and over and over again yeah yeah absolutely it's the it's the sort of the muscle memory figuring out the amount of twists that you need to put in to get the right rotation and tightness on it and it's all about practice absolutely stretching out those fingers back yes but if your finger stretching exercises yeah when I get home I don't look like an L a gangster you know cut the scene finger stretching effect makes in front of the mirror so hey it's all good bad so Nike said I do appreciate what these guys here have done allow me to documents process please go check out those links and as always from mark and myself I hope whatever you're doing you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead this is their form that outdoors pace out

Channel: Zed Outdoors

Views: 43,205

Keywords: zed outdoors, outdoors, survival, survivalist, prepping, preppers, camping, hiking, bushcraft, wilderness, sas, military, forest, wild, tactical, bob everyday carry, every day carry, edc, bug out bag, awesome, best, wildlife, nature, army, ray mears, bear grylls, self sufficiency, wild camp, wildcamp, solo, primitive

Id: TsCPz5Of2Mc

Length: 40min 31sec (2431 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017