Courtesy of all you lot voting for me on the photo competition, I won a place on one of the new Bushcraft Expeditions Workshops of my choice.
Flint Knapping is something i've been interested in for a few months and had been struggling away in the garage with. Trying to shape chunks of surface flint into tools, with absolutely no success what-so ever.
So having an option of a day workshop with someone that knows what they are doing was too much of an appealing option and I booked in on that workshop.
For anyone that hasnt seen Karl's work before, he has samples of it both in his website: www.primitive-technology.co.uk and on the bushcraft expeditions site in the UK gallery: http://www.bushcraftexpeditions.com. He also has some example work in the Bushcraft and survival skills magazine in the articels he has been written for it.
Now before I continue - I must stress that I have very little knowledge of the history back then, so please excuse my ignorance when describing things as I will probably get their proper names wrong
The course was held down in Dorest and with an early start to the course I decided to contact the team and see if it was possible to head down the night before and camp over. This wasn't a problem and I was met in the nearest village by Woody and followed him down to the woods where I was also met by Jane, who is one of the other instructors.
The site they run the courses from is a fantastic peice of woodland, with a large variety of different speices of trees, shrubs and plants throughout it.
I was made very welcome by both Woody and Jane who had a dutch oven roast dinner on the go that I was asked to join them with. Which I must confess was absolutely delicious!
The following morning Karl had arrived at somepoint before I rose, and the remaining students arrived at 9am (A little late for the documented 8am start, but nevermind )
It was to be a nice small group, with just two other students.
Before we began Karl showed us a hand axe that had been found in the very woodland that we were in, it served as a great reminder that, whilst we were all here today to learn some new skills out of an interest, 10,000 years or so beforehand there were people living in this very area trying to live and survive with the same skills we were about to be shown.
So we got under way with the day that was to include some demonstrations and practical sessions of making some of the tools that would have been used primarilly for butchery and hunting. Including hand axes, hide scrapers, microlith blades, and finally some simple arrow heads. We also explored the local stream for our own flint nodules and were shown how to select flint. Something that I had clearly been doing wrong at home
Karl's teaching was first class and his passion and expertise in the field shone through and his knowledge of working the material is unquestionable.
We were also provided with an excellent buffet style lunch which was provided midway through the day to give us some much needed energy back before continuing with our work.
Even though we didn't produce the master peices that Karl was knocking up in minutes, I think we all learnt a great deal throughout the day and has provided a solid grounding on the basic techniques to produce functional tools.
All in all an excellent day and I thank Karl, Woody and Jane for experiance, Tony for organising the competition, and also you guys for voting for my pictures.
P.S I hope Wayland has as much fun on his workshop as I had on mine.
Talking of pictures here are a couple from the day:
A selection of Karl's work of different styles of tools:
The tools for the job:
Karl at work producing a hand axe out of local flint:
A selection of the microlith blades, and the hide scraper I produced:
Finished hand axe and arrow head, made from local flint by Karl:
Flint Knapping is something i've been interested in for a few months and had been struggling away in the garage with. Trying to shape chunks of surface flint into tools, with absolutely no success what-so ever.
So having an option of a day workshop with someone that knows what they are doing was too much of an appealing option and I booked in on that workshop.
For anyone that hasnt seen Karl's work before, he has samples of it both in his website: www.primitive-technology.co.uk and on the bushcraft expeditions site in the UK gallery: http://www.bushcraftexpeditions.com. He also has some example work in the Bushcraft and survival skills magazine in the articels he has been written for it.
Now before I continue - I must stress that I have very little knowledge of the history back then, so please excuse my ignorance when describing things as I will probably get their proper names wrong
The course was held down in Dorest and with an early start to the course I decided to contact the team and see if it was possible to head down the night before and camp over. This wasn't a problem and I was met in the nearest village by Woody and followed him down to the woods where I was also met by Jane, who is one of the other instructors.
The site they run the courses from is a fantastic peice of woodland, with a large variety of different speices of trees, shrubs and plants throughout it.
I was made very welcome by both Woody and Jane who had a dutch oven roast dinner on the go that I was asked to join them with. Which I must confess was absolutely delicious!
The following morning Karl had arrived at somepoint before I rose, and the remaining students arrived at 9am (A little late for the documented 8am start, but nevermind
)It was to be a nice small group, with just two other students.
Before we began Karl showed us a hand axe that had been found in the very woodland that we were in, it served as a great reminder that, whilst we were all here today to learn some new skills out of an interest, 10,000 years or so beforehand there were people living in this very area trying to live and survive with the same skills we were about to be shown.
So we got under way with the day that was to include some demonstrations and practical sessions of making some of the tools that would have been used primarilly for butchery and hunting. Including hand axes, hide scrapers, microlith blades, and finally some simple arrow heads. We also explored the local stream for our own flint nodules and were shown how to select flint. Something that I had clearly been doing wrong at home
Karl's teaching was first class and his passion and expertise in the field shone through and his knowledge of working the material is unquestionable.
We were also provided with an excellent buffet style lunch which was provided midway through the day to give us some much needed energy back before continuing with our work.
Even though we didn't produce the master peices that Karl was knocking up in minutes, I think we all learnt a great deal throughout the day and has provided a solid grounding on the basic techniques to produce functional tools.
All in all an excellent day and I thank Karl, Woody and Jane for experiance, Tony for organising the competition, and also you guys for voting for my pictures.
P.S I hope Wayland has as much fun on his workshop as I had on mine.
Talking of pictures here are a couple from the day:
A selection of Karl's work of different styles of tools:
The tools for the job:
Karl at work producing a hand axe out of local flint:
A selection of the microlith blades, and the hide scraper I produced:
Finished hand axe and arrow head, made from local flint by Karl:
