Message-Id: <3.0.32.19980813084013.006af878@peseta.ucdavis.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:40:14 -0700
To: baidarka@lists.intelenet.net
From: John Gerlach <jdgerlach@ucdavis.edu>
Subject: [baidarka] Preserving green willow shoots
I cut enough willow shoots to rib two boats about a year and a half ago and
almost immediately my boat building project had to be placed on hold. It
was a lot of work to find good shoots here in California so I didn't want
to just chuck the shoots. Instead I pickled them in a table salt solution,
double bagged them with the heaviest plastic leaf bags I could find (the
bags were too short so they were doubled head to head), closed the bags
with duct tape at each end and where the ends of the bags overlapped (about
25 shoots per set of bags), and stored them in the crawl space under my
house (it doesn't freeze here). Yesterday I pulled a couple shoots out and
tested them. No mold, no rot, and they seemed to bend a little easier than
when they were fresh. The solution was one pound of table salt and less
than a quart of water per set of bags. I sprinkled the salt over the shoots
before I added the water and I rocked the bags to distribute the solution
after the bags were sealed with duct tape.
John Gerlach