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First off you will need to find lengths of bramble that are form the current year’s growth these tend to be a nice bright green and flexible. The darker woodier growth is not as keen to give up those nice long fibres.
With the bramble gathered I take the thicker end and snap off enough thorns to give me a good grip on the stem about 10cm does it for me. Then with a narrow forked branch or two twigs I rune the bramble back and forth along its full length till all the thorns are gone.
Next stage is removing the outer skin I used to do this with the back of a knife blade however after staining my favourite knife after a weekend of demonstrations at Westonbirt Arboretum I am now more careful to use stainless steel or something a little less expensive. It just needs to be hard and blunt to rub the skin off, exposing the whitish fibres that we will be taking. Rubbing to hard with erode the fibres themselves so go easy at first till you know how hard you need to press when scraping.
With the skin and thorns stripped take the stem at one end with a few centimetres showing between right and left hand and twist it in opposing directions till you feel it break. I describe this on the bushcraft courses I run as breaking its neck. Move down the stem every 10cm or so twisting as you go.
Once your done find the centre of the length and give it a twist, this should raise a ribbon of fibres away from the pithy core which you can slip a finger under and slide along to separate the fibres.
As a rule I extract 4 or 5 ribbons of fibre which can be used immediately for whatever you have in mind. Most times I use them for string but have had a few attempts at using the ribbon for weaving with some sketchy results but I put most of that down to my inexperience.
Written by: Dave Roderick.
