I am always on a quest for strong natural fibers because of my hobby which is primitive archery flight shooting. We are required to use all natural materials. Having a lightweight strong bow string is vital in achieving competitive performance levels.
Just searching the internet it appears no new strong fibers have been discovered in several hundred years. Today we have very little need for them as synthetic fibers are far superior in strength to weight ratios. I would imagine any need that does exist would be in the garment and textile industries.
My question is wether or not we still have companies that hire people to seek out new fibers, similar to the way pharma companies experiment with plants looking for pharmaceuticals.
Yesterday while waiting for my girlfriend to come out of a Dr.s visit I discovered a tree where the main vain running down the length of a 7" leaf tested out very strong. The fibers were shorter at about 5" average but excellent strength and texture. I doubt it would be possible to efficiently harvest these fibers as much easier to harvest fibers with comparable qualities are readily available. But it got me thinking about all the obscure little known plants that likley have never been tested.
Who if anybody does research like this and how could someone like me locate them?
I doubt anybody does this as a paid vocation.
Fiber hobbyists- knitters and weavers and such- are more likely to be involved than ropemakers, imho.
So maybe start there- check local yarn shops to see if anybody sells custom animal fiber yarns- yaks, llamas, whatever.
It’s not uncommon for people to spin pet hair into yarn- rabbits for example.
Spider silk is of course the strongest un-untilized fiber.
Maybe you should look at spider ranching as a way to get where you want to be.
The biggest fiber nerds I’ve met are cloth diapering parents. Hemp is hardly a new fiber, but it definitely had a surge in popularity within the last five or six years in these circles because it’s highly absorbent compared to its volume, it’s a natural fiber, and it’s relatively environmentally friendly.
After that, bamboo was all the rage. One WAHM made diapers of bamboo velour and they became ridiculously sought after, with people trading special limited edition patterns and paying exorbitant amounts for them. (It was a fad, of course, but bamboo fiber is still used by many brands.)
I also learned most of what I know about wool (as well as a certain number of untrue or unproven “facts” about it) amidst the cloth diapering hordes.
So yeah, I’d say seek out fabric artists and cloth diapering fanatics, the crunchier the better.
I belong to a few weaver message boards but so far no one has come up with anything better than flax linen for what I do. Ramie is very close as is nettle and some milk weed fibers.
A few months ago I thought I might have a hot one with the umbrella plant shoots that it puts out once a year that are about 2 ft long. It tested good in the field but once I did a more detailed test it was far below linen in strength. It did produce a nice silky thread more similar to cotton in strength. I keep thinking I will stumble on to that magic fiber no one has yet discovered.
There are still some indigenous people out there with in depth knowledge of local plants and their uses. Have you considered talking to them? I know someone out there is making cloth out of pineapple plant fibers, for instance.
Otherwise, I’ll second the suggestion of spider silk. There was a guy in Madagascar, I think, who set out to weave a tapestry of spider silk. He had a couple of hundred people working there and about 4 million spiders which got “milked” every couple of days. One of the weavers said that when the loom was strung, you could pluck one of the threads, and it would twang like piano wire.