I've been a hemp fan since the 70's. With all the hype about hemp you'd have to smoke a bail of ditch weed to get a buzz. It's just that it looks like the evil marijuana plant. So it's banned as a useful textile product in the United States. Since I've been back on my Primal Journey, trying to eat things with only three ingredients that I recognize and can pronounce, I thought it was only right that I eliminate sulfur, butane, flint fumes and white gas vapors from my pipe and cigar ignition sources. Enter hemp wick. Two ingredients. Hemp cord and bees wax. The flame is infinitely variable depending on the angle of the wick. No drips, little ash, and infinite burn time. It lights when wet. It does require wetted fingers to extinguish it, but that's easy. Wraps around anything. Heated it will stay in place better. Frayed it lights easier. It's a super strong cordage in a pinch, and has a nice candle wick smell when blown out. My stick match usage has gone to zero. I use the wick to light lanterns and lamps, pipes and cigars, to light off alcohol preheat cups on kerosene lanterns and lamps, and as a bail wrap to prevent the bail from dinging the paint on a pristine lantern. Ten bucks will get you 100 feet of hemp wick from Poland. It should be a product of Kinston North Carolina, but the "War on drugs" says we can't grow this useful and versatile plant in our country. Great stuff to have in your kit.
You can grow it now! I know farmers and gardeners that have tried it, just not a ready local market for it. However, it will add a lot of organic matter to the soil and some varieties will even fix nitrogen in the soil. A lot of hemp was grown during WW1 and some of it went wild (aka ditch weed). I have never noticed much in Alabama, but then we grew COTTON down here (still do), but I have known people from the Ohio Valley that said that it was everywhere up there.
Grows thick and wild all over central and Southern IL in the areas where it was farmed for for fiber for rope, and canvas. It was a huge mistake lumping it in with marijuana as have been the billions of dollars of tax payer money that funded the eradication programs that failed miserably.
Many of the Founding Fathers were into farming hemp. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us!
If you put it in a tube, you can more easily snuff it without wet fingers. Just extend as much as you want, pull it back in and cover the end and it's out. And the tube will give you more rigidity, if you need that. I made a tinder tube that is the same principle.
Yeah, I knew a guy in college from that area. He said that people, usually out-of-state college students, would see it growing in a ditch alongside a road, and thinking they were in Eden, harvest it. Only later would they find out that their haul was useless! They did save the local road crews from having to cut or spray the ditches!
Friend from out of Country (Norway) came and spent a few weeks and was amazed at all of the weed that grew everywhere. After explaining that it was just IL Ditch Hemp and the history of why it is here. He was like WOW what a waste of a great textile material.
I'm trying to picture this tube that you can pull the wick back into, and I'm not seeing it. Can you send a picture. Sounds interesting.
Thanks Hanzo. My hemp wick is only 2mm, but your tinder tube idea might still work. Here's the plan. My cigar punch is made from an old brass ink pen tube with a car power window cable cleaning punch. I think this tube might fit the hemp wick pretty well. To carry the tube and wick I'm thinking a small bottle with a stopper would work. Wrap coil on coil around a piece of car antenna or other small diameter tube and you'd have quite a length of hemp wick in a small bottle. The center tube would ensure a space for the wick tube to fit. To use you'd pull out the wick tube, shove some hemp wick out the hot end and use it to light whatever need lighting. When done you slide the hot end down into the wick tube to snuff it and put the tube back through a hole in the cork stopper of the bottle. I can't post pictures of the bottle and stopper because it's all in my head at the moment. I did test the pen tube diameter and how it snuffs the wick. It works great. Thanks for the idea Hanzo.
I've never used a stopper as friction has been enough. I do not keep a very long length of cord in there. If you want a thinker piece of your hemp wick, you could always braid it. And you can find metal tubing in lots of diameters. I usually but a piece at the hardware store and just cut it to size. Makes lots of gifts. Scouts love it. Dads too. Once I pull the burning end back into the tube, I just snuff it by covering with my thumb. Pulling it in already starts the snuffing process. Even without flame, the ember will light stuff.
