Part of Phase 2: First Year
Textiles here is a single pipeline run end to end across seventeen articles: choose a fiber, ret it to free the fiber from the woody core, break and separate it, then spin and lay it into finished rope. A wrong choice at the very first step shows up at the end as a hauling line that snaps, a lashing that rots in weeks, or a fishing line too stiff to knot.
Fiber Selection is the overview; Bast Fibers, Leaf Fibers, Bark Fibers, Nettle Fiber, and Hemp Processing are the specific plant choices underneath it. Bast fibers — hemp, flax, nettle, jute — draw strength from the stem’s phloem layer, combining tensile strength, length, and rot resistance that bark fiber lacks; nettle specifically needs cutting in late summer, after flowering but before seed drop, and still yields only 5-10% of its stalk weight as usable fiber. Leaf fibers like sisal, yucca, and cattail skip retting entirely and can be used within hours of harvest, the opposite of hemp or flax’s weeks-long process — though a hectare of hemp can yield 1,000-1,500 kg of raw fiber once that longer pipeline is run. Bark fiber is the fastest to prepare, twisted into cordage the same day it’s harvested, but the weakest: a finished 6 mm bark rope still loses 20-40% of its strength when wet.
Retting, Dew Retting, Water Retting, Breaking and Scutching, Hackling, and Fiber Processing turn a bast stem into usable fiber. Retting dissolves the pectin gluing fiber to the woody core using nothing but water and naturally occurring bacteria; dew retting does this in the field with just rain and dew, the lowest-equipment option, while water retting submerges 15-20 cm bundles for 4-14 days, finishing faster in warmer water. Breaking and Scutching then physically separates what retting loosened — a flax brake with blades 3-5 mm apart breaks the woody core in 4-6 passes, processing 4-8 kg of retted stems an hour by hand. Hackling refines that further, pulling a 50-100 g strick through progressively finer hackles down to 4-6 mm pin spacing to separate long line fiber from tow, at about 2-3 kg an hour. Fiber Processing is the overview that ties the pipeline together and states its real constraint: a perfectly retted batch can still be ruined by rough scutching or a late harvest, since the pipeline is only as strong as its weakest stage.
Drop Spindle, Spinning Singles, Thigh Rolling, Twist Direction, and Hand Laying turn prepared fiber into finished cordage. A drop spindle, a top-whorl design weighing 50-80 g, runs a spin-draft-wind cycle that an intermediate spinner can work at 30-60 meters an hour, drafting fiber best at a 20-30 degree twist angle — push past 45 degrees and the strand starts losing strength and kinking. Thigh rolling needs no tools at all and still produces 2-3 meters of two-ply cord an hour, strong enough to hold 50-100 kg at 6-10 mm thick. Twist Direction explains why alternating S-twist and Z-twist locks a rope together by friction, and Hand Laying is the final step: always pick up the rightmost strand, add a half-turn of twist, and hold a 20-25 degree lay angle throughout.
Choosing a Fiber
The overview, then the specific plants it draws from and what each one trades off.
Retting and Breaking
Freeing fiber from the woody core, then separating and refining it — a pipeline only as strong as its weakest stage.
Spinning and Laying Rope
Turning prepared fiber into a single strand, then three strands into finished rope.