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- -aside from concealing wacky weed crops?
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- An article in the paper today says a bill went to the Illinois governor that would fund a study to investigate wether they should allow hemp as an alternative crop. I know people here have said they had various clothes made from it, but who cares? My question is, “is hemp more durable/cheaper or does it have any other particular qualities that warrant its use on a logical basis?” To do so, it would have to be lower-cost and as durable as cotton, or the same cost but more durable, or have some other quality that sets it apart from what else is currently available. My sparse info says it’s considerably less durable than cotton; it grows faster than cotton, but that’s exactly the reason it is less durable. ~ Yea, you can make a shirt out of hemp, but why bother? - MC
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~ I just upgraded from 64 mRam to 320! 'Scuse me while I play UT for a few hours…
It ain’t serious, but this Onion article is worth a re-read: Marijuana Linked to Sitting Around and Getting High
Hemp rope is quite common and pretty darn handy when you need to tie someone . . . uh . . . something.
Hemp is good for:
Cloth ( Durability depends on variety of hemp plant: There are several)
Rope
Paper (Excellent quality, far more renewable than trees)
Vegetable oil (again, superior quality)
It is rumored that the Constitution is written on hemp paper. Idustrial quality hemp won’t get you ‘high’: You could smoke an acre of it, and the only buzz you’ll get is from asphixiation.
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- Yea, but my question is, is it better and the same price or cheaper than what we already use for those items? -As far as cloth goes, when was the last real advance in natural fibers? Why is hemp any better than cotton? When I look for outdoor clothes, -clothes that give the best warmth and durability, probably 95% are completely synthetic, with the rest some type of wool. I heavily suspect that hemp just isn’t considered good enough for clothes, except by stylin’ posers who want to be able to say “this CK shirt I have on is made of hemp”. The few hemp items I’ve run across on the net were way more expensive than regular materials like cotton; hemp don’t seem to be any cheaper, even where it’s legal.
-The only rope made from natural fibers anymore is very light-duty thin stuff, clotheslines and whatnot. How big a market is that?
-Paper: the quality of paper depends mostly on how it is processed, not the fiber used in it. The processing invlved in producing high-quality paper is what generates most of the pollution.
-Veggie oil: can’t says I ever heard this. Why is hemp oil superior? What does it do that other types don’t?
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If you can get high smoking it or if you should be getting high at all isn’t my point. It just doesn’t seem real useful for anything except what I said in the OP. Most clothes aren’t even made in the US anyway; foreign clothing manufacturers could have likely used hemp already except that, , -most people likely wouldn’t buy it if they did, just judgeing by the quality of the material. - MC
- Yea, but my question is, is it better and the same price or cheaper than what we already use for those items? -As far as cloth goes, when was the last real advance in natural fibers? Why is hemp any better than cotton? When I look for outdoor clothes, -clothes that give the best warmth and durability, probably 95% are completely synthetic, with the rest some type of wool. I heavily suspect that hemp just isn’t considered good enough for clothes, except by stylin’ posers who want to be able to say “this CK shirt I have on is made of hemp”. The few hemp items I’ve run across on the net were way more expensive than regular materials like cotton; hemp don’t seem to be any cheaper, even where it’s legal.
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Well, like some posters said, in the past, the major industrial use for hemp plants was rope. Now that most rope is synthetic, that’s less important. As for cloth, paper, etc, you can use it for that, but the quality really isn’t that great. Hemp is an oily plant. Unfortunately, this means that in order to use the fiber, you need to get rid of the oil. This is difficult and expensive, and, unlike one of the posters have said, hemp paper isn’t of that high quality, which is to say, it requires a lot more processing to make a useful paper. In short, for most things, hemp isn’t really cost efficient. It has medicinal qualities. THC (tetra-hydrocannabol…the stuff that makes you high) can be used as a muscle relaxant and pain killer, but if you’re cultivating it for industrial use, I don’t think you’d make much money.
Many things were made out of hemp. The first American Flag was made out of hemp. I did some searching around, and found the best place for information about hemp to be…
http://www.ecomall.com/biz/hemp.htm
Hemp is a nitrogen fixer. It is good for the soil. Cotton is a heavy feeder; it is bad for the soil.
Cotton has been selectively bred for a very long time. The thinking is that with some research, a good breed of hemp could be found/developed that would have some or all of the good properties of cotton with out drawbacks of cotton, such as its harmful environmental effects.
Additionally, it should be remembered that there is massive a infrastructure and market for cotton goods. This reduces the cost, relative to hemp.
This is not to say that it is or can be more cost-effective than cotton, but it is worth investigating.
I have heard stories of how DuPont in league with Hearst lobbied hard for the outlaw of hemp/marijuana. Dupont wanted to create a market for its new wonder substance, Nylon, and Hearst owned a huge timber resource, and hemp paper was hurting the demand. Not sure how close to the truth it is, but as long as there are huge industries aligned against it (Philip Morris, for instance, owner of Miller Brewing), hemp/marijuana will remain marginalized.
BigDaddy, you’re going to want to check out those links from SpoilerVirgin.
Cotton is cheaper because there’s a huge industry applied to it’s production. Hemp costs more due to it’s high hand-work requirement. Apply the industrial process to hemp, and you’d find costs dropping radically. Hemp doesn’t deplete the soil, reducing the need for fertilizer, and thus reducing pollution (run-off). I’ve heard (no solid proof) that the Levis were made from hemp cloth back in the 1800’s/early 1900’s. As for synthetics in clothes, well, it’s gonna be there no matter what your natural fibre source may be.
The main reason hemp isn’t more widely used in clothing has rather little to do with it’s suitability, and far more to do with it’s availablilty.
Again, economies of scale.
There is rather more need for natural fibre line than you realize. Natural fibre line has some important characteristics that synthetics lack, chiefest among them, the lack of snap-back when a line parts. You won’t find much heavy duty natural fibre line in your local HomeDepot™, but you’ll find it aplenty on any industrial dock.
Wood pulp paper involves some heavy-duty processing, involving some nasty chemicals. Hemp, while oily, requires less destructive processing, and grows a d*mn-sight faster than trees, thus reducing the need for pulp wood, logging, and further reduces the run-off pollution generated when forests are cut-down.
Comparable to sunflower oil, at a very high yield per acre, while fixing nitrogen, instead of stripping it, as sunflowers do.
Again: High levels of handwork, because there’s no industrial support for it at this point. Leads to widely variable quality.
Our local Renaissance Faire site is on what used to be hemp fields; the stuff still grows as a weed along the edges of the property. At least once a season some keen-eyed performer finds some, thinks, “Whoa, dude, I hit the mother lode!” withoug realizing this is industrial weed, not recreational. After harvesting some, drying it, and smoking it, they invariably get sick as three dogs…