Wooden sheath – finishing off
The final stage of finishing the wooden sheath required some rattan-work, so I thought I’d do an introductory video (below) on how to split rattan and include the simpan knot (which is used to bind the two halves of the sheath together).
Rattans are simply climbing palms (same family) and you quickly get to know them in the jungle as they snag your clothes with their thorns and hooks. They’re also known by the names wait-a-while, stop-a-minute and lawyer vine (the last moniker presumably because everyone hates lawyers?)
The longest rattan is rattan manau (the record being 170 metres in length) and, when Baha was a young man, he would harvest this rattan from the jungle. It’s a risky business because the skill is to cut the rattan as high up in the canopy as possible (the rattan stabilises itself by hooking onto nearby trees as it grows, but its own stem is not rigid). The bravest in the party will climb up the rattan stem itself until he’s as high as he dares (maybe hundred feet up) and will then start to cut the rattan stem above him. The idea is to cut though as much of the stem as you can without actually severing the rattan itself, then climb back down to earth and twist the rattan to make the break above where it’s been weakened. But, if you cut too much of the stem you are holding onto, it will plunge to the ground with you hanging onto it! It’s the jungle version of Russian Roulette and the unlucky ones who cut too far often die as a result.
The wooden sheath took longer to make than anticipated, but I’m glad I did it – there’s always something nice about having equipment you’ve made for yourself and the wooden handle just feels… right. The question now is whether the handle will hold the parang blade in or not….time will tell!
Hi Paul,
I watched all your videos many times, as soon as I want to try one of the skills showed here; But I never watched this video before, I just didn’t know it was here!
What a nice surprise for me, I really like Rattan stuff (I found this video searching about rattan).
– the rattan manau harvesting is an incredible practice. I’ve never heard of that before. is it still happening?
– it’s great to see how you split the rattan (also shown in jungle made cord for bowdrill). is it easy to cut through the piece while you’re splitting it, or whe you thin down the excess of “non skin stuff” ?
– What is the simpan knot used for, except for sheaths sealing? It’d be great on a rattan bracelet. The Orang Asli survival bracelet 🙂
Thank you many times for your time, work and passion Paul!
Wawa
Hi Wawa,
Thanks for the comment (as always) and great to hear you’re a fellow fan of rattan! It is fantastically useful stuff – both strong and flexible and has many uses. The Orang Asal here use it a lot and, as it happens, they do make bracelets (using multi stranded simpan knots) although I never thought that they could be used as a primitive survival bracelet (good idea!).
The harvesting of manau still goes on and I assume they use the same method. With any rattan the problem of pulling it down from the trees is the same and it is almost impossible to do this without cutting off the branches that have intertwined with the canopy first.
Cheers!
Paul