- Joined
- Mar 18, 1999
- Messages
- 9,966
Yucca grows like wildfire in just about every where I've been in Southern California. It is a really useful plant from food source, super strong cordage, soap, and here as a quick needle and thread.
Scraping the waxy outer coating off the leaves makes the fibers easier to pull apart. This coating also has a lot of saponin in it and makes a lot of soapy lather.
A little more scraping and pounding with the back of my knife. This is the main reason I like a square spine on a blade. It gets a little firesteel use to, but scraping wood and plants is a lot more common for me.
Then it can be easily peeled down. I just kept peeling until I had a relatively thin strand still attached to the point. These suckers are crazy needle sharp too!
I whittled down a little bit to thin out the "needle" portion. If your careful, you could easily use this to sew a button back on and this stuff holds like iron.
I tested it out on heavier material and it worked no problem
And it's not a hike for me without doing a little rock scrambling
Scraping the waxy outer coating off the leaves makes the fibers easier to pull apart. This coating also has a lot of saponin in it and makes a lot of soapy lather.

A little more scraping and pounding with the back of my knife. This is the main reason I like a square spine on a blade. It gets a little firesteel use to, but scraping wood and plants is a lot more common for me.

Then it can be easily peeled down. I just kept peeling until I had a relatively thin strand still attached to the point. These suckers are crazy needle sharp too!

I whittled down a little bit to thin out the "needle" portion. If your careful, you could easily use this to sew a button back on and this stuff holds like iron.

I tested it out on heavier material and it worked no problem

And it's not a hike for me without doing a little rock scrambling

