[RonF]

My Scout Troop goes through a lot of rope, for pioneering projects and such. We were at one of those reenactment days, and one of the vendor booths was selling hemp products, including rope. So I bought 100' of 1/4" hemp rope for our use.

It's a lot more flexible than manila rope. The fibers are more numerous and much finer. This actually makes it more difficult for the boys to splice, as they have little practice at it. That same property, however, makes it easier on the boys' hands when they go to tie knots and lashings. It's much stronger than sisal (the charts say it's about 10% stronger than manila), which is even coarser than manila rope is. I have yet to see how well it does lashings, but I expect it would be superior to manila in that regard.

[jaydubya2]

Iv'e seen shampoo that advertises it contains a hemp extract. It even has a pot leaf on the bottle!

[jaydubya2]

Here in northern Indiana, there were fields of hemp planted by the US government during WWII for making product such as rope. It still grows wild. Every year a few punks get busted picking the stuff. They don't realize it has zero potency.