How To Make Natural Cordage From Bramble

hey guys how you doing this is that from setup doors I hope you're having an awesome day so once again I'm with a dear friend of mine month who's a head instructor at Wilderness point is mance how you do it and well said welcome back welcome back lady excellent stuff on the same day because we've recorded two previous videos now what this video is is a continuation of a series I'm doing videos on been doing with mats and we're in the historic city of Oxford in a beautiful woodland now what we're doing is we've been recording today a series of videos on making natural cordage now we've recorded two previous videos that be very well received both using cedar bark so we use in cedar bark and one using see the roots and in this particular video what mance is kind of showing me is the process for using bramble to make natural cordage now if you've been following my video recently or any length of time you'll be seeing my progression on my bushcraft Basecamp if you saw my video where it's on a recce of the site you can see that there was bramble everywhere literally as far as the eye can see so this particular video is very up for me in my base camp because this is what I'm going to use in to make natural cordage for my base camp location so this is the first time I've seen this process being done live let alone on video and so what max has kindly allowed me to do is as well as show me the process on how to make cordage from bramble he's also allowing me to record this to serve as a teaching aid for you should you wish to go out and do the same also so like I said this is a continuation of previous two videos that I would have link to down below in the description now we're here now and what we're going to do now actually you've found a spot where we found some bramble so mance is going to kindly now show us the process from start to finish on how he will make natural cordage using bramble Simoes evokes you come across some bramble now which we're going to forage yeah just a quick question before we kind of carry on with the actual kind of process of turning it into cordage and that is what is the difference in terms of identification between blind or ends normal sting a little okay stinging nettle tends to grow vertically there's an example right here there you go so looking at it Cygnus will grow vertically with opposing leaves and as we know brush against it we're going to get stunk whilst a bramble tends to be long strands and creates a bush and this a bramble can grow anything up to a centimeter a day well depending on ideal conditions as you can see there's a distinctive difference between the Leafs the bramble I mean these thing metals are opposing leads growing off a main stem growing upwards Wiles with the brambles they're alternate leaves as we go up the stem in a nice long horizontal creeping right okay so we don't need that sting net at the moment let's get rid of that so this is what we want from the bramble late spring summer or early summer is the best time to collect brambles for cordage as we know when we go through the year the bramble becomes really woody and the fibers as a consequence become very good woody and quite brittle so the best time to collect brambles is around this time of year and where are we wearing June at the moment here in the UK so just moving around you can see it is still quite flexible and although the tip fibers won't be as brilliant as we go down the stem we'll be collecting a lot of fibers from here and you can see some previous year's growth we've gone to the winter how woody has become very very brittle and the fibers are just too far gone at that stage the one tip I can give you when collecting rambles is Times Square don't scream and there's nothing wrong when using gloves so okay so we're going to collect this strand I can be like firm with it there and just use your knife reach down to roughly where you wanted it there's the length that we want that's sort of decent length it's not the longest I have collected bramble lengths up to 12 foot in length gosh nice long fibers from it wearing gloves particularly at this time of year I can just strip is there a direction you go when you're doing it um you can go in either direction it doesn't really matter but what I tend to do when armed stripping is go against the leaves so you can see the leaves of growing to my left or viewers your right I always come opposite that way as I go down the stem on ripping the leaves off as well as you go through the year the spines as many of you will know will become very hard so just being able to do it with gloves isn't going to be easy and for that just use your knife and use the back of the knife and just scrape the spines off or the thorns in this case the last things we want them digging into us and particularly when we get onto the later stages of actually prepping and pulling the cordage out really what as many of those thorns removed right okay so so now shall reach our head on over and start the sitting with an expert yeah we've got one that'll be enough for us I may grab another as we go along and we'll head over and practice for the cordage perfect so mance collected a bramble was the first step so obviously we've removed the outer thorns thorns and yep and so now now we need to get access to this very very thin layer here so you can see that sort of white spongy level layer that is the core of the bramble which is just pure piste we need to get rid of and do you remember the cedar bark how we had to remove the outer so we need to remove the outer layer to get at that really really thin layer of fibers going around the pith so there's two ways of doing it one you can just take the fibers away and then strip the outer bark off afterwards or you can strip the outer bark off first and then get access to ila s and what I'm going to do is strip the outer off first so just using my knife I'm going to use the back of the knife I'm just going to go down the different facets faces of the bramble and just very gently because I don't want to cut the inner fibers just remove the outer and see there's not a lot of pressure going on and if it starts skipping rather than me putting more pressure on I'm just going to just remove and just take it really gently particularly with our bushcraft knives which tend to have a 90-degree edge on the back because obviously the 90-degree edge comes in really useful for fire lighting we want to make sure we don't go into the fibers on the inside inadvertently cut them very like the river wasn't it is particularly at this time of year where everything is still young as I was saying earlier once we go into summer more and more it becomes Whittier and a lot tougher but at this time year where we still got a lot of fresh growth we want to be very gentle with it because the fibers are still quite young and soft more importantly which will help us produce some really nice cordage no such man so Matt's all I has been removed now the next step in the process now we need to separate those fibers from the piste and for that we're going to go down the route of what we do with Nettles we're just going to fashion you don't need to be really really tough with this but you do need to be a little bit tougher than what you would if you were prepping nestlé's as I'm going down just rotating the stem and in essence what I'm going to do this separate these fibers I want from the inner piece and I will make it significantly easier separating the two pay attention to where you've had the nodes from the leaves because there's a lot of fibers concentrated in that area just special get all around that and we just work our way all the way up the step obviously as you come to the thinner section of the brambles it gets softer it doesn't need the same level of brushing as what we did down at the base of the stone which was thicker okay now what I always like to do is I just go down the whole length of the bramble but I've just brushed make sure that there's no stiff areas left in there where I haven't been able to get through or separate the fibers from this from the piece within it it just makes the job easier as we go along and it's worthwhile spending that time getting it right in the first place rather than having to go back okay so I'm happy with that now I separate the fibers from the pit there we go so you can see the fibers that produce our cordage it's coming away nice and easy from up if and if yelled apart we're going to use for the actual quality outer part yes like in Nestle's it's the outer part where all the fibers are which are in essence the blood vessels of the plant and they just long long cubes and again once you come to a slightly stiff area just be gentle with it because as with the cedar cordage video where I said the long fibers are far more beneficial than lots of short ones because it saves us time in the long run there we go okay so this slightly clearer and greener area is where I didn't remove the outer covering but this translucent is all the fibers from the bambbles that we want okay so now we have the next step in the process now okay so as you can see we've got quite wide fibers here and what we just want to do or the nature's almost done it for us is split it into equal width so all I'm going to do is just carry on with that and just get myself some nice long length of fibers back where's that split there can be thin smoke it that way three even is good luck here okay so from one bramble lengths we now have five strands that we can work with now the one thing we need to be aware of out here particularly on a day like this it is really hot and how these fibers are beginning to dry really really quickly so although I would allow these to dry and re wet them like we've discussed in sort of the previous with videos I'm going to go ahead and show you just how to do the cordage but if it does start getting too dry and starts getting brittle the easiest way is just to read wet it again so slight offset from the center as I said in the cedar cordage video allows us to put fibers in at a later stage and offset them so we don't build a weakness in so essential one side is slightly longer than the young yeah so that shows one piece you've got that is just one piece so you can see one side is what about six inches shorter than the other yep so I know that's the middle sometimes worthwhile just licking your fingers and all we're going to do is start that to glide process again you can see how thin this is in comparison to the cedar cord so with that one just to recap you you turn there okay I'm right-handed like most normal people sorry lefties okay so I twist away from me mm-hmm so the furthest one I twist away reach round with my little fingers grab the second strand and then I twist towards me then I move my left thumb and finger which is pinching the overlap just move it forward to pinch that new overlap so again pushed away towards me away towards me twist away grab towards me twist away grab towards me and the important thing is to keep it very tight don't loosen it up make it really tight and once you get the knack of it it just becomes really easy notice the distance that I am keeping my fingers from it I'm not all the way down the Strand I mean about a centimeter or so away that allows me to put a nice twist in just with one finger rather than having to let go grab towards me and I keep doing that and just moving my left and just forward down the cordage okay so there we go just begin to see last bit of cordage coming in we can carry on with that and then as we run out like in the cedar cordage we'll just add another strand in if one starts getting too thin and I'm noticing it's not laying properly then I'll just add another strand in if they can it up it doesn't matter how much of an overlap or how many overlaps we add in or extra strands as long as you call it properly and tightly then it will be fine you may notice my fingers moving away it's because these fibers getting dry nice hot day so I'm just licking my fingers just to allow that traction and that grip that I need in the rotation of these fibers so mance we're coming to the end of obviously one length of it we are so we'll add on another pacing so we need to add on like you rightly said so what I'm going to do as you can see this fiber which is the shorter one of the two it started coiling so I'm just going to uncoil that slightly so I go back to the straight strands and I'll get my next piece and as you can see this end is quite thick now so this is the thick end of the fiber compared to the thin end so I want to add a thin to thick so what the main reason behind it is that I don't get uneven size in fibers on a nice thin piece here's one and see it's getting quite dry so I'm just going to look at it they've kept some moisture back into it make it pliable again and I'm going to do an overlap you can see where my last twist was and a gif itself give it some decent overlap doesn't matter about the extra I'm just going to pinch it and then all those I'm just going to twist in and I do an initial twist like so just to hold the fibers in so I don't have two separate sets of fibers there so now that's in I can just carry on you can see that one fiber is now just a little bit too thick for me we're getting two different sizes that's a millimeters difference between them so I am going to add another fiber in right now so I don't want them going to thin because they're twisting there we go that's roughly that same size same sure your consulate is just want to keep it a same with ya yeah because that's where the strength comes from if we suddenly have an uneven sizing of it the thicker stuff is going to be stronger than the weaker stuff and particularly if you were using bramble core just say for a fishing line we want an even strength all the way through that way the tension of the fighting fish gets passed all the way up the line rather than going up to a certain section hitting a weak spot and then slapping yeah you can see my cordage has got a little bit thicker but the idea has come forward I could have spent a little bit more time just getting it perfect but it lets the viewers see you guys at homes see the principle behind it and because I've got such long lengths I'm going to have to spending more time now separating the two different strands at the end of the length they don't end up becoming a twisted knot of firing alright that's so what we've seen is just by splitting the bramble into the way I wanted to go a nice long thin fibers from one of these about five millimeters maybe six millimeters and coiling them we can get a nice thin cordage but you need cordage for your primitive shelter don't you yes that is going to be too thin the strength is there but making something like that you're going to need loads of it to coil around now the other way of doing it is just by using the whole width of the bramble and rather than splitting off like I did we'll just use it from there and it's again exactly the same principle and a twist and just coil with the whole length high interesting thing else separate you don't separate it out no now if it's just going on your general shelter cordage you don't even need to take the outer bark off like I did but you can see straight away that the diameter the cordage that we're making is going to be significantly because well yes a big difference is let okay and something like that will be more strong enough to for your shelter I've made cordage from brambles just two-ply roughly that thickness I've let it dry before I corded it and I have pulled my weight up just on that cordage so it is very very very strong cordage and in when I'm shelter building if there's brambles around it is my go-to cordage natural cordage because brambles as we know guys get everywhere and you've got nice long length sit down in the evening around the fire once you've spent that time stripping all the bramble I mean the thorns off you just sit there almost becomes a meditative state there you go and that is very very strong and that's what I would suggest with the brambles you've got at your site make loads of that cordage and build your shelter with them so there you go guys that is a wrap for this video where max has kindly taught us and myself included how to make natural cordage using bramble most thank you so much that you're welcome it's been a hot day today it's been awesome third video in a row we're doing well yeah I'm anymore that's who we were keep pushing me to break and break them to heap on the floor lots pythons got a charm so there you go that was the first time I've seen the whole process in person myself like I said the brambles somewhat quite important to me personally but this is the primary resource I'm going to use it at my base camp to pause a lot of cordage so as Nigel's not expected for me to see kind of the variations in some of the thickness mm I thought it was very useful don't some I didn't even think about ya beforehand especially that big I've learnt today spending time with mounts on the natural cordage now you can kind of really affect the thickness of the cordage depending on how you want to use it and manipulate the material it just comes down to the initial quantity of fibres you put in right and the more fibers you put in the more careful you have to be really twisting it but the principle is exactly the same one question I should have forgot to ask you when we've processed the bramble yeah and we've got it ready to weed so let's say you do all of that and you're going to weave our lace dates in them what would be the process in between that so for example so you process with a pry open yeah like you've removed all the thorns you take all the outcome skin off with you and now let's say I do a load at that and I want to take it home and then a couple of days later I'll want to then weave it yes who cordage so it's going to be exactly the same like the cedar cordage okay where we allowed you to dry off just we soak it and make it pliable again and just go from there so we said we so what what I do what I just just well there's two ways depending on how dry becomes and how long you've left it what I would do is initially is just dip it in water and leave it for an hour - okay depending on how thin your fibers are rise the thicker the fibers the more time they need for moisture to come back okay if they never find it and then just hang them for a little bit just let that excess moisture drip off and then go for it I liked what we were doing out there in that Sun what was there 25 degrees Celsius for our American print it was a hot day and the fibers will begin to dry off and all I was doing is just working in my mouth if you revert to that just have a little pot of water and just rub it in with your fingers why because all we're doing is putting that little bit moisture back in to make it pliable again so that we can plat it all twist into the two-ply perfect one love pointing to the test some other mention in my bushcraft basecoat video and that is the natural pool jungling you're making it about everything I'm going to be making it's going to be important to test and so it's good to hear that bramble cordage is quite strong when done properly it is very very strong you will be surprised how strong it is and people look at Ingo rambles they some pain in the backside rip it up by the amount accorded yes it takes a little bit more prep time than nettles and people are worried about the thorns we've shown you our way around it okay take those sores off the strength in the cordage is phenomenal really really good as I said I've thrown a length of cord over a branch and pulled myself up on it right and that's 85 kilos here you get a rocky theme using paint no but I did have people laughing at me you're never going to do it how I man she'll have no idea that's fantastic now I'm glad to we're looking forward now and thank you once again for taking the time out you must show me and the viewers at home so as a recap I'll put a link below to the previous cordage videos I've done we've managed to continue this natural cordage making series so please do go check those out obviously I'm doing a pushcart Basecamp series well and important this into practice and obviously on my channel I have a collection of those available for you to view if you haven't done so already we may possibly be called one or two others just kind of depends on time either way make sure you subscribe to channel to stay updated on future videos and last but not least without shadow Vidal I'm going to put a link below to Mounties YouTube channel which is under wilderness pioneers the school that it runs in Oxford and I want to put a link to a YouTube channel they've done some amazing videos some really really detailed videos so to put a link below please it will mean the world to me if you go check that out you like what you see hit the subscribe button secondly I will put a link to the Facebook page belonging to mance where you can engage with them and obviously the show a lot of content there also and a third link I will put to their website where you can find out more about the actual work that they do here in Oxford and they run some incredible training with some fantastic feedback and I'm not just saying that there really are just some of the best that are out there so once again I really appreciate you taking time out Maps sex pleasure once again I appreciate you guys watching and from Matt and myself I hope whatever you do you have a blessed day a blessed week ahead this is ephram's outdoors peace out