I've made a fair bit of nettle cordage in my time and here's how I process mine:
To save all the pain I personally use an old rigger glove on one hand for removing the nettle from the ground and "de-stinging" it, grab the nettle right at the base and pull it out, I find that you can grab the root with bare hand and not have to worry too much about being stung.
Holding really tightly I grip the stem with my gloved hand and pull upwards, this rips off the leaves from below and as it's working "with" the direction of the stingers there's less chance that they're gonna get stuck in the glove or anything, I do this a few times to get rid of the leaves. From this point on it's all bare hands.
To get rid of the stingers on the actual stem a friend told me a trick a few years back and it's worked well for me so far and that's to use fire. In practice I use a lighter, run the flame up and down each part of the stem and you should hear little crackling sounds, this, from what I can tell, burns the tips of the stingers and renders them useless (in my experience anyway)
From here I then just process as normal, there may be one or two stingers left but they won't be much of an issue
Hope this helped a bit, let me know if anything was unclear
Happy cordage making!
Originally Posted by JoBadger
I've made a fair bit of nettle cordage in my time and here's how I process mine:
Reply With Quote