Processing Nettles for Cordage Making

How to  process nettles for cordage

You’ll need: the tallest nettles you can find (wait until they’ve flowered), a mallet or log, gloves and a knife or secateurs

1. Wear gloves. Cut your nettles close to the ground.

2. Strip the leaves off from the cut end to the tip. Run your gloved hand up and down the stem to remove the stinging hairs. Remove gloves.

3. Use your mallet or log to roll over or gently hit the leaf nodes to flatten them slightly. Also tap the cut end to split it.

4. From this split, use your thumbs to increase the length of the split, opening out the nettle stem like a book.

5. Near to the thick end,  holding the nettle with both hands and the inside facing up, waggle the stem to snap it.

6. Gently peel off the outer “skin” of the nettle (that’s the bit you want to keep), by removing the woody inner nettle (you can discard this). Nettles have square stems, so you’ll notice that the outer skin peels off into 4 ribbons, held together at the node points. Carefully separate the ribbons from each other.

7. It’s best to let the ribbons dry off for a few hours (if you make cordage with fresh nettle ribbons, they’ll shrink as they dry, resulting in loose twists and poor quality cordage). Hang them up so that they dry evenly.

8. After a few hours (depending on conditions), they’ll be dry enough to use for cordage-making. You may need to dampen you hands slightly to make the nettles pliable for twisting.

The more nettles that you process, the better you’ll get at making long ribbons. Nettles are certainly plentiful and the resulting fibres are strong.