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Teach me about cane

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Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
198
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7
Location
Gougar Crossing, Illinois ( ~ Joliet)
References to "cane" as a material for things like powder measures, pipe stems, etc. are common, but what is it?

Is it a southern thing? I am not familiar with any common growth regularly referred to as cane here in northern Illinois. Am I just missing it?

Where would I find it? How would I prepare it for use?

TIA!
 
River Cane aka Arundinaria is a type of grass similar to Asian bamboo, and some botanists think it should be part of the bamboo family, others do not. It looks sorta similar to Asian bamboo, but has less of the "joints" or rings that are found in the various Asian bamboos, and isn't quite as strong as some of the Asian varieties.

LD
 
Here's the entry from the Kentucky Encyclopedia:

Cane, Arundinaria gigantea, a member of the grass family, is the South’s only native bamboo species. It grows in canebrakes, dense evergreen colonies interconnected by a tough, extensive system of rhizomes, or underground stems. The plants reach heights of twelve to forty feet, with stems as much as two inches in diameter. In Kentucky, scattered patches are the only remnants of presettlement canebrakes, which covered hundreds of acres. John Filson’s 1784 map of Kentucky is annotated with numerous references to “fine cane land".

Here's a very small remnant of a canebrake, young, but of the original species of cane, on the bank of the Green River in central Kentucky.



Spence
 
In the desert Southwest, the very similar substitute, that serves all the useful purposes of river cane is the giant reed, Arundo donax, as well as the common reed, Phragmites sp.

The taxonomy is contentious among scientists. There is supposed to be a difference between the two, but it is not easy to distinguish and the size of the plant has been the biggest noteworthy difference. The problem with that is the size of the plant seems to vary more due to available water than to anything else.

The reason it matters, is because Arundo is considered an invasive non-native species, brought here by Spaniards, whereas Phragmites is accepted as a native species.

Actually, large reeds, cane if you want to call them that, were common, and many places in TX, NM, and AZ bear place names including the spanish name for the plant, Carrizo. I have also talked to archeologists who have found large diameter sections of cane dating to pre-columbian times, so whatever it is or was, it probably was native here and Arundo fills all the same niches and can be used for making arrow shafts, fishing poles, small boxes and containers, flutes, walking sticks, and you name it. It is also strong enough and was used to build quick shelters. It grows over 15' long and an inch or more in diameter, so it makes convenient tent poles or can be bent over to make dome-like buildings as well.

The old "canebrakes" of the stuff disappeared in most locations sometime after cattle moved in and grazed it down too often. I have found isolated wilderness patches of it, though, that were protect from grazing by cliffs and waterfalls. It is used as an ornamental, as well as an effective screen or windbreak in landscaping. It is beginning to flourish along the streams, since cattle began to be fenced out of riparian areas in the 1980s, and is considered a nuisance by many, as it impedes the flow of water to downstream water users, and may cause flooding by choking stream channels., so it is often cut down and poisoned by various groups.

It is great stuff, though, for all kinds of craft or survival uses.
 
I find most of the natural cane here in New England to be too thin walled and fragile for use as any kind of lasting tool, powder measures, shot containers, etc. But, bamboo picked up at craft stores can be very useful. I've used it as powder measures, very easy to make as one end is naturally sealed, containers for premeasured shot charges for my smoothbore, other containment vessels, and the neck for bags of roundball.

This shows a piece containing 1 1/8oz. of #5 shot and sealed with a small cork, used to carry 6 to 8 of these in a leather bag hanging from my shot pouch for small game hunting, and a couple with more shot for turkeys...

7WiKo4v.jpg


Here is a measure, 60 grains I believe, alongside an 85 grain antler measure...
T49a1mU.jpg


And here is a piece from the larger diameter end in use for a neck on a bag of .610 ball...
8shfvpt.jpg
 
Brokennock said:
And here is a piece from the larger diameter end in use for a neck on a bag of .610 ball...

8shfvpt.jpg

That's damnfine work, there - me likey ! :bow:
 
Rivercane is unfortunately being exterminated from the original habitat it covered for millenia. As kids, we used to make strong fishing poles from it; but it's getting more and more difficult to find large sizes.

I make powder measures from it and use it for other items. It's great stuff - in the deep South, at least - and still as useful as it's always been. A particularly venomous variety of the timber rattlesnake is called "the canebrake rattlesnake". These guys live in the lowlands of the deep South where they also inhabit the river
canebrakes. The farther north the less hardy it seems to be; but with global warming that may change.
 
Cane was a mixed blessing to the early pioneers into Kentucky. Literature of the time is full of references to it, pro and con. It is said by one James Wade in his narrative _Buffaloes in the Corn_, to have been one element allowing the first settlers to get a foothold and hang on:

"Kentucky never could have been settled in the way it was had it not been for the cane and game. They never could have gotten out the provisions through the wilderness in safety”¦.as would have been necessary to have made a beginning. Their stock and themselves would have starved in the winter. As it was, all they had to do was keep the Indians from killing them, though they were sometimes hard pressed to do this. Otherwise, they had cane for winter and abundance of game for both summer and winter."

There are references to feeding it to their horses and cattle, covering the roof their half-face camps, burning dead cane to boil maple sap into syrup, making eating utensils from it, hiding in the canebrakes from Indians, being ambushed from canebrakes by indians, wandering lost in huge canebrakes. Daniel Boone apparently used a stem of cane as an emergency ramrod. James Smith stepped on a cane stob and got "a shocking thing to be in any person’s foot", was isolated in the wilderness for a long time.

I doubt we can really appreciate how much of the land was covered by cane.

Felix Walker's Narrative of his trip with Boone from Long Island to the site of future Boonesborough in March, 1775, the first settlers, after crossing the Rockcastle River:
"At the end of which we arrived at the commencement of a cane country, traveled about thirty miles through thick cane and reed, and as the cane ceased, we began to discover the pleasing and rapturous appearance of the plains of Kentucky."

And, William Clinkenbeard, 1779:
"Most all was cane in this rich country, with some chance ridges. Monstrous place to travel through once, grapevines, thorn bushes, cane and everything."

It was too thick to travel through in many places, and parties and individuals, even on horseback, were forced to change their course, go far out of their way to avoid huge areas of it.

Spence
 
So,,, I know that years ago you could scavenge bamboo poles from carpet stores. I assumed that was oriental bamboo, now I wonder.

What about all the old "cane" fishing poles sold commercially? Were those oriental bamboo as I supposed or were they rivercane?

I guess what I'm getting at is questioning whether those materials would be appropriate for crafting relatively HC items. Or do I need to take a safari south of the M-D Line to scavenge some authentic rivercane?

Meanwhile, my first use was to be for pipe stems. I see a passable pipe stem can be made from a piece of Catalpa branch by drying it some, trimming it to a useful size/shape and poking the pith out of the center with a wire.

But was there wire in the day? Did the old timers have a convenient way of getting the pith out of a length of branch?
 
Spence,

The vast cane bottoms were a sign of previous agriculture. In Southeast, you could tell where an Indian town was because after years of habitation the soil would deplete and the town would move up or down river a few miles. The Old fields would grow up with cane, making canebrakes. After a number of years the town may return and clear the canebrakes that had replenished the soil.

Kentucky the Caneland had vast cane brakes in the historical period. Two main events are theorized.

The first being the final collapse of the Mississippians after the Desoto Expedition of the mid 16th Century introduced European diseases and pests like the Eurasian Boar that ultimately decimated the indigenous populations. It theorized that untold millions may have died. The remnants became the historical tribes encountered a century later. The Mississippians vast fields overgrew up with cane.

The second event the rise of the Iroquois Empire armed with European arms that pushed the remaining tribes out of Kentucky. For instance the Shawnee were split with a large portion relocating to Coastal Georgia. Elements of the Souix were bumped into the Great Plains. At the height of Iroquoian power, small pox swept through. By the mid 1700s Kentucky was again up for grabs, the vast canebrakes being the remains of once tended ground.
 
In Over My Head said:
But was there wire in the day? Did the old timers have a convenient way of getting the pith out of a length of branch?

Yes.

A Blacksmith could make Iron Wire by heating an Iron Rod and pulling it through a series of ever smaller gage/die blocks. This process is repeated through ever-smaller holes until the wire is as fine as desired. Iron Wire was also imported into the Colonies.

Here is a Ebook on "The Metallurgy of 17th and 18th Century Music Wire"
https://books.google.com/books?id=sE1mk8ed1dkC&pg=PA6&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Gus
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Black Hand said:
Let's not overlook brass wire.

Yes, brass and copper wire were available as well, though these were imported and not made locally in most of the colonies.

However, any Blacksmith could make wire out of Iron, as long as he had even some fairly primitive dies he made up.

Oh, they also could have used Iron square "nail stock" rods to heat and poke out the pith from cane.

Gus
 
Artificer said:
Oh, they also could have used Iron square "nail stock" rods to heat and poke out the pith from cane.
Not necessary. Cane, like regular bamboo, doesn't have pith. Inside each section there is a cylinder of very thin 'paper', loose, not attached to the inside of the stem when the cane is dried. You can just pull it out. For a thin pipestem cut open at both ends, just blow it out.







Spence
 
In Over My Head said:
I guess what I'm getting at is questioning whether those materials would be appropriate for crafting relatively HC items.
Cane is bamboo, just another species. You won't find much difference in it and 'oriental' bamboo. I grew bamboo in my yard for years, used it to make several things for my reenacting kit, it's really neat stuff to work with. Have at it, your items will be closer to HC/PC than many others.

Spence
 
Rivercane is unfortunately being exterminated from the original habitat it covered for millenia. As kids, we used to make strong fishing poles from it; but it's getting more and more difficult to find large sizes.

YES the ham-fisted, knuckle dragging, booger eatin' morons, working for my county's agriculture and parks service can't tell the difference, so they go around with herbicide and attack groves of Asian bamboo that have exited back yards where it was planted as a privacy screen, and infiltrated county park land, BUT they also apply the same poison to the natural cane they find by the creeks..., "Duh because it looks like bamboo" [said with one finger up their nose].... :cursing: ALL under a policy to promote "Maryland natural flora".

LD
 
My grandma called it pipe cane and as a kid my cousin and I used it to make corncob pipes and sneak out behind the hen house to smoke. Makes good whistles too!
 
i'm lucky to live in an area that still has thriving canebreaks along almost any good sized creek in wooded areas.........also have a bamboo thicket in my (R.I.P.) Grandmothers yard across the street.

time to do a little harvesting
 
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