KEEPING TRADITIONAL SKILLS ALIVE

[Guest wisp]

There seems to have been a few posts about longnetting of late but, how many of us know about the amount of work that goes into making a long net? What has happened to all those time honoured skills that were the main stay of a mans income from years ago?

It was this line of thinking that got me started on my last project. In my working life i use many long nets and purse nets,some are quick set and some are trad set. All catch rabbits but some feel better to handle and some, dare i say it are bloody awfull to use on certain ground. It was with this in mind i set out to make myself a trad set net that would be a pleasure to handle, light in weight, and would fullfill the task of catching rabbits. Now im not a novice when it comes to making nets, to my credit i have made shrimp trawls, cod ends for beamers, gill nets and a few hundred purse nets so i knew the amount of work ahead.

 

Firstly i had to choose the type of twine that it was to be made from, size of mesh and the dimensions of the net when finished. I would go for a spun nylon in a weight of 10/9. I have made purse nets from this and fancy it to be the best for my new net, mesh size would be 4inch knot to knot (using a 2 inch mesh gage)The reason i didnt go for a 4 1/8 or even a 4 1/2 mesh was because of the stretch in spun nylon.

 

The dimensions of the finished net would be 100yrd long by 12 mesh deep. Add to the width the 2 salvedge meshs and this would make it 14 mesh deep. Just out of madness i worked out the number of meshs to be 50,400 in total. All those knots would be cast by hand. Thats a total of 3600 rows of 14 meshs.

 

After the body of the net was made i set about adding the salvedge meshs, these are the double stitched edge meshs that have the top and bottom running lines going through them. This is where i would like to say a big thank you to netrigger, for sending me the spool of twine that now makes up the salvedges on my net. After that i added the running lines, these were stitched using a lacing stitch and followed by a whiped finish to aid in there free movement through the end pins.

Once the net was compleat i made up some end pins,gave them a quick paint and then it was finished.

 

So why did i choose to go to such lenghts to make a 100yrd long net when i could have bought a machine made nylon one? Simple realy,ask anyone who has worked a hand made net and they will tell you the quality is so much better and for me, well, it was about keeping the old skills alive

hello mole catcher,could you please tell me why the running lines have to have free movement through the end pins and not be tied to them.(i am new to this)

[mole catcher 1]

When using end pins on long nets in the traditional manner the reason for free running lines is two fold. If they were tied to the ring when you go about half hitching the running lines round the tops and bottoms of the hazel poles, it will be highly unlikely that you will have used the same amount length of twine on both the top and bottom runners and this would course either of the two lines to become slack and the other being shorter.

 

secondly any running lines that are biten through by a rabbit can be repaired and as the lines are free running again it wont upset the even spread of line between the top and bottom runner. Of course the first and last mesh on both the top and bottom salvedge will be tied to the running lines and this is not what some believe i ment.

 

Hope this has helped

 

edited to add: sorry there are no pics but this was written back in december and as it was nolonger being read i removed all pics from my photobucket account. if anyone if after some pics as a guied please pm me and i will see if i can help.

Edited June 27, 2007 by mole catcher