I have a lot of NZ flax on my property and it’s been on my mind for a while to see if I can make some cordage from it. Supposedly flax performs well among the natural fibres.
I wasn’t enthusiastic enough to build a rope-making machine, so I was a bit unsure of an entry point to experiment. Certainly strips of flax leaf, even completely unworked, make an excellent temporary binder for garden waste, and they will (just) hold a reef knot without breaking. My method is to cinch the bundle of branches (or whatever) with a camlock strap as tightly as I can then tie the strip and release the camlock.
I stumbled upon a page here: Flax Cordage with an excellent video (second one on the page) showing how to make twine in the hand. Perhaps this is old hat to most of you but it was a revelation to me.
I managed to replicate his results. I scraped the strips a bit first, exactly as he did with my fingernail, just enough to tease out the fibres but not enough to really clean off all the green gunk. I know that unprocessed strips of flax harden and become brittle so I kept my new cordage around for a while and tied a few knots in it and after several days it was still in good condition despite its slap-dash construction.
I tried a few other experiments: completely raw strips of flax (i.e. not scraped), as well as other materials such as crab-grass (kikuyu) runners, of which there are plenty in an overgrown “no-man’s land” area between my property and a neighbouring crop farm, and vine creepers, of which there are regrettably plenty of in my own garden. Basically anything you can twist without breaking seems to work, at least for immediate and temporary use.
Raw flax strips laid into cord are actually OK without any scraping if you use the result immediately - it gives added strength and flexibility over just strips; it will take a few kinds of knots, though you’ll never get them undone when it dries. It’s hard to find an application though where the time spent is worth it for a single use, since the strips alone are quite adequate.
The other problem is that when you split out your strips, assuming you want a decent length, the strip changes from almost square in cross-section at the base, to wide and flat in the middle, then tapering off dramatically at the end. And as you work your way along, any significant difference in the profile/stiffness between the two strips tends to lead to one almost straight central strip with the other winding around it, rather than the symmetrical ideal you were aiming for.
My next task is to find a scraping method that causes the least breakage and yields the most long fibres. Any sharpness in the tool (including a thumb-nail) will tend to shred lots of fibres leading to a very “hairy” result.
Then I’d like to see how I can combine the cords to make heavier cordage and even rope. The guy in the video says he just doubled the cord using the same techique but I struggled with that: regardless of how you hold the strands they will unwind if you twist away from you, so I reversed the technique (twist the upper towards you and bring the lower in front instead of behind) and got something resembling his picture. But it was unsatisfying. It didn’t feel or look right somehow. I’d like to understand how to make proper rope from smaller elements. Including how to best join the strands (end to end) to make longer cordage.