The Hunter Gatherer course (http://www.wilderness-survival.co.uk/the-hunter-gatherer/) requires that no metal tools are brought or used and so as a participant I and the others would be reliant on one of the earliest of technologies; stone tool making.
Now heaven knows Im no flintknapper; give me an expertly prepared core and a few hammer blows later Ill have knackered it. And equally obviously my lack of skill is a major hurdle for someone who has an interest in the primitive skills side of bushcraft like I do.
However my consolation has always been that surely not every Stone Age person would have had the skills of John Lord and the cack-handed ones like me presumably didnt all die at a very early age (before leaving leave any descendants) because they couldnt make a symmetrical biface.
Therefore hopefully I could make a basic set of tools which would allow me to make useful items the tools would definitely not be as beautiful as they would be if made by a master of the craft, and they certainly wouldnt be as efficient in use but if they were functional Id be more than happy.
In my last thread I wrote about making a simple knife using both simple flakes and some crafted stone tools. In this thread Ill show some of the flint tools I presented for my course assessment and talk a little of how they were made.
With regards to the wooden elements of the tools they were not always created entirely with stone tools: with some I cheated at times with modern tools. In my defence Ive always carried out the same operation before with primitive tools but time pressures meant I wasnt always able to be a purist. For example I might shave down a stick part way to its finished thickness with a metal knife because its quicker then Ill finish shaving it down with a stone tool. Needless to say I will at some point in the past have shaved down an entire stick to its final dimensions with only stone tools.
With regards to the stone part of the tools all but the two knife blades I made myself; of those two one was made by John Lord (the white one) and the other was finshed by John Lord as I was starting to panic that I'd ruin it (as I said above I'm not a good knapper).
At its most basic a stone tool is just a flake. Depending on the degree of sharpness of a flake edge it can be used to skin an animal or cut meat, carve wood, act as a wood plane or as a scraper to remove bark or flesh from a hide. Depending also on the shape of the flake theres the possibility of using it as an awl, a drill or for cutting grooves in wood or antler. Potentially quite versatile is your simple flake:
The simplest method of adapting a flake is retouching. This toughens the edge (a razor sharp fresh edge soon dulls in use) and also shapes the flake. Retouching one edge of a flake whilst leaving the other untouched means that you can safely hold the flake by the retouched edge whilst using the untouched edge to cut with.
Retouching can also be used to strengthen an edge so that it can be more effectively used for scraping, as seen below in the following end scraper:
Also by retouching at intervals you can create a saw blade effect which could be used for ..sawing! In the example below Ive combined an untouched edge, a retouched flake end and a retouched saw edge to create a small useful woodworking tool:
Finally by retouching you can create an awl or piercer or perhaps a drill bit:
All of the above retouching was done from one side of the flake. By retouching from both sides you can create a stronger but still sharp edge suitable for an arrow head or a knife blade.
Finally by selectively breaking your flake (or in this case a blade ie its twice or more as long as it is wide) you can make a burin which is very useful for cutting grooves in materials such as antler or bone:
Next some simple hafting techniques. I showed how to make a split knife handle in my last thread but you can also make a simple handle by splitting the wood only part way down its length, tying cordage around where the split begins to stop it running further, inserting the flake, then tying cordage around the end of the handle to hold the flake in tightly.
An advantage of doing this is that you dont end up with cramp in your fingers and hand from trying to hold a small flake over a prolonged period of time. Also if flint is a scarce resource then it allows you to utilise very small pieces (the original Hoko knives on which this technique of hafting is based had only thumbnail sized blades). Here Ive used the same technique to haft my saw blade:
By placing the flake at the end of the split and then lashing with cordage you can quickly make a hand drill:
Slightly more complex is a side haft which is how the following knife was hafted:
A little more complicated (and noticeably more likely to go awry in the doing) is a central hafting as used in the following knife:
Finally heres some groove hafting. This allows me to use small flakes and when one dulls I can quickly replace it with another; a sort of Stanley knife arrangement, which again is useful if you havent much flint. The flake is placed in a groove cut with a burin and held in place with the small wooden piece as below:
All the above tools were made from flakes knocked off a lump of flint but you can of course make tools from the remaining lump of flint (the core) by selectively removing flakes.
One tool you can make without needing to haft it is a handaxe:
By changing the basic shape of the core you can make a variety of other tools such as the adze:
Similarly you can make an axe head by changing the shape of what flint is left after shaping. The hafting of this was a pure cheat with modern tools as time was running out before the course started. Given enough time I would have preferred to have hafted it using perhaps the char and scrape method as I did with the ground stone axe (also pictured). The rawhide binding is horrible but I only had a thick dog chew to cut it from I made the axe (as well as a number of smaller items) on WSS's Primitive Tools course (http://www.wilderness-survival.co.uk/primitive-tools/) last month. Excellent instruction from Anthony Whitlock and I'd thoroughly recommend attending:
There is of course a number of other tools that could be made with flint but the above were more than sufficient for the pre-course assessment and, I hope, to enable me to carry out any tasks Ill need to do on the course.
With the course start date less than a week away I may not get time to post the planned thread about the final requirement for the pre-course assessment; namely the items woven from natural materials. If not the next thread will be a review of the course itself once Ive recovered.
Now heaven knows Im no flintknapper; give me an expertly prepared core and a few hammer blows later Ill have knackered it. And equally obviously my lack of skill is a major hurdle for someone who has an interest in the primitive skills side of bushcraft like I do.
However my consolation has always been that surely not every Stone Age person would have had the skills of John Lord and the cack-handed ones like me presumably didnt all die at a very early age (before leaving leave any descendants) because they couldnt make a symmetrical biface.
Therefore hopefully I could make a basic set of tools which would allow me to make useful items the tools would definitely not be as beautiful as they would be if made by a master of the craft, and they certainly wouldnt be as efficient in use but if they were functional Id be more than happy.
In my last thread I wrote about making a simple knife using both simple flakes and some crafted stone tools. In this thread Ill show some of the flint tools I presented for my course assessment and talk a little of how they were made.
With regards to the wooden elements of the tools they were not always created entirely with stone tools: with some I cheated at times with modern tools. In my defence Ive always carried out the same operation before with primitive tools but time pressures meant I wasnt always able to be a purist. For example I might shave down a stick part way to its finished thickness with a metal knife because its quicker then Ill finish shaving it down with a stone tool. Needless to say I will at some point in the past have shaved down an entire stick to its final dimensions with only stone tools.
With regards to the stone part of the tools all but the two knife blades I made myself; of those two one was made by John Lord (the white one) and the other was finshed by John Lord as I was starting to panic that I'd ruin it (as I said above I'm not a good knapper).
At its most basic a stone tool is just a flake. Depending on the degree of sharpness of a flake edge it can be used to skin an animal or cut meat, carve wood, act as a wood plane or as a scraper to remove bark or flesh from a hide. Depending also on the shape of the flake theres the possibility of using it as an awl, a drill or for cutting grooves in wood or antler. Potentially quite versatile is your simple flake:
The simplest method of adapting a flake is retouching. This toughens the edge (a razor sharp fresh edge soon dulls in use) and also shapes the flake. Retouching one edge of a flake whilst leaving the other untouched means that you can safely hold the flake by the retouched edge whilst using the untouched edge to cut with.
Retouching can also be used to strengthen an edge so that it can be more effectively used for scraping, as seen below in the following end scraper:
Also by retouching at intervals you can create a saw blade effect which could be used for ..sawing! In the example below Ive combined an untouched edge, a retouched flake end and a retouched saw edge to create a small useful woodworking tool:
Finally by retouching you can create an awl or piercer or perhaps a drill bit:
All of the above retouching was done from one side of the flake. By retouching from both sides you can create a stronger but still sharp edge suitable for an arrow head or a knife blade.
Finally by selectively breaking your flake (or in this case a blade ie its twice or more as long as it is wide) you can make a burin which is very useful for cutting grooves in materials such as antler or bone:
Next some simple hafting techniques. I showed how to make a split knife handle in my last thread but you can also make a simple handle by splitting the wood only part way down its length, tying cordage around where the split begins to stop it running further, inserting the flake, then tying cordage around the end of the handle to hold the flake in tightly.
An advantage of doing this is that you dont end up with cramp in your fingers and hand from trying to hold a small flake over a prolonged period of time. Also if flint is a scarce resource then it allows you to utilise very small pieces (the original Hoko knives on which this technique of hafting is based had only thumbnail sized blades). Here Ive used the same technique to haft my saw blade:
By placing the flake at the end of the split and then lashing with cordage you can quickly make a hand drill:
Slightly more complex is a side haft which is how the following knife was hafted:
A little more complicated (and noticeably more likely to go awry in the doing) is a central hafting as used in the following knife:
Finally heres some groove hafting. This allows me to use small flakes and when one dulls I can quickly replace it with another; a sort of Stanley knife arrangement, which again is useful if you havent much flint. The flake is placed in a groove cut with a burin and held in place with the small wooden piece as below:
All the above tools were made from flakes knocked off a lump of flint but you can of course make tools from the remaining lump of flint (the core) by selectively removing flakes.
One tool you can make without needing to haft it is a handaxe:
By changing the basic shape of the core you can make a variety of other tools such as the adze:
Similarly you can make an axe head by changing the shape of what flint is left after shaping. The hafting of this was a pure cheat with modern tools as time was running out before the course started. Given enough time I would have preferred to have hafted it using perhaps the char and scrape method as I did with the ground stone axe (also pictured). The rawhide binding is horrible but I only had a thick dog chew to cut it from I made the axe (as well as a number of smaller items) on WSS's Primitive Tools course (http://www.wilderness-survival.co.uk/primitive-tools/) last month. Excellent instruction from Anthony Whitlock and I'd thoroughly recommend attending:
There is of course a number of other tools that could be made with flint but the above were more than sufficient for the pre-course assessment and, I hope, to enable me to carry out any tasks Ill need to do on the course.
With the course start date less than a week away I may not get time to post the planned thread about the final requirement for the pre-course assessment; namely the items woven from natural materials. If not the next thread will be a review of the course itself once Ive recovered.
look forward to the follow on.
