I’ll be honest; I’m thoroughly surprised at how well this style of sprang frame works.
This is about as basic as it gets for a woodworking project. It’s one peeled willow branch (cut mid summer for my willow bark basket project). No joinery, no fasteners. I bent it into a U shape, which does take a little bit of technique to do evenly and without cracking/snapping anything, then tied it to dry in that shape using jute garden twine. That’s it. That’s the process. The U is about 30 inches tall. (Once dry, it stays in that shape.)
Three months later, I removed the ties and reused the twine to create taught anchor strings across the top and bottom.
During lunch today I “warped” it up and tried doing a few rows, using straws cut from Giant Foxtail stems as dowels.
I honestly didn’t expect the twine to stay put as well as it did. The string isn’t super duper tight, but I don’t want it to be because I’m using a straw to open a shed in the middle so I can reliably scoop up front and back strings in the right order without my picking hand seizing up.
If needed, I could tighten it either by using my legs to push the cut ends further apart from each other or by lashing some kind of static spacer there to do the same. Right now the tension is fine, and working with the bend in my lap is a little more comfortable, but you can flip it top-bottom and then flip to the back and just keep working like you were.
Smash the Shell 