Survival... Indian time

[Billy-o]

Does anyone else on this forum agree with this?
.

Sometimes it is odd to find support where it shows up

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d7jw

One of the things I like about modern western time is that it wasn't invented so much to measure the cost of waged labour as to figure out where you are on the surface of the earth. The hourly rate came along later

 

[TLM]

Steelmaking at small scale is not very difficult. There is a Finnish guy who travels at various medfairs making steel. In about 2.5 hours he gets usually about 1.5 kg raw steel chunk. The ore he collects from lake bottoms or bogs so no rock mining. The only pre treatment is baking. The only made parts in the process are a tuyere and bellows. The manufacturing scale is quite sufficient for a lot of hand tools.

So you have proper steel hand tools fairly easily. After that you can kind of choose the level of history where you want to live. Well at least level after bronze age.

 

[Janne]

Toddy, a very famous dish from (old) Norway, Iceland and the Swedish big island Gotland too!
Not had the pleasure (yet)

Did your granddad mention boiled Cods head? That is nice. You should become a Pescatarian!

You know, I think that todays food habits are to blame for much of the environmental issues today.
Flying in beans from Africa.......
Crazy. Buying boneless, skinless (tasteless) Chickenbreast ( most originate in China) . Horrific.


You can call it Indian Time. I call it Oldfashioned Time. Quality time. The planning is fun. Go out with family and harvest. Go home and let wife clean the berries. Let me preserve them.
( I love cooking)

 

[Toddy]

Can you find a link ? we had a thread on bog iron a while ago, and the working thereof too.

We get bog iron too, but it makes Iron not steel..... the production is originally called 'bloomery' and we find the waste quite often on medieval sites.

Steel making needs the iron to be smelted with carbon, and it wasn't made in any real reliable quality or strength until the Bessemer process. Basically they couldn't control the amount of carbon absorbed into the mix with iron, and if they got it wrong, well, they were better off just making really good wrought iron instead.

Temperature is the critical thing, and you can't reach 1500+ degrees using just a tuyere and bellows. Best you can do is somewhere around 1100 to 1200 ˚C and that's double bellows, in controlled conditions.

Loads of links on it if folks are interested
http://www.wealdeniron.org.uk/Expt/furn.htm

https://the-orb.arlima.net/encyclop/culture/scitech/iron_steel.html

 

[TLM]

Well, the Swedes have surströmming. Some call it preserved fish, others biological weapon ...

 

[Toddy]

Toddy, a very famous dish from (old) Norway, Iceland and the Swedish big island Gotland too!
Not had the pleasure (yet)

Did your granddad mention boiled Cods head? That is nice. You should become a Pescatarian!

You know, I think that todays food habits are to blame for much of the environmental issues today.
Flying in beans from Africa.......
Crazy. Buying boneless, skinless (tasteless) Chickenbreast ( most originate in China) . Horrific.


You can call it Indian Time. I call it Oldfashioned Time. Quality time. The planning is fun. Go out with family and harvest. Go home and let wife clean the berries. Let me preserve them.
( I love cooking)

@Janne
I am allergic to fish. It makes me throw up and break out in hives. Most unpleasant. At best I end up with hayfever symptoms. So, no, I won't be becoming a Pescatarian. Personally I have no idea how anyone ever looked at that cold scaly eyebally thing and thought it might taste good !

Otherwise, I agree about the food buying habits and we have loads of Scottish (and British) recipes for fishhead soups and stews. Lot of meat in a fish head, especially salmon and the like.
M

 

[TLM]

If one wants low carbon steel the higher temps are needed or very carefully controlled conditions. But at 2% a lot lower temp is enough. Also there is the crucible way of producing wootz. Old Japs could directly produce somewhat huge chunks of steel in their tataras, never have studied exactly how. It was far from uniform but steel all the same.

I dont think the guy at the fairs has webpages but I'll look.

 

[Toddy]

It came up (on the old forum I'm sure now, and those threads are not easy to find) about how to make your own metal bushcraft knife from very first principles
It was an interesting thread.
Maybe it's time we re-did some of those first principle type threads again.

 

[Janne]

Have they been able to reproduce Wootz steel with the ancient methods recently?

In those days, only one small area in the world knew how to.
Plus, one area ( monastery?) in todays Germany could produce decent steel, which was made into the famed Ulfberth blades. around 1100 years ago.
I do not think we know how that steel was made back then.

These are good examples of what I wrote earlier. We have lost the knowledge how to make certain things with primitive methods.

 

[Toddy]

I know that the Chinese (and some of the Africans too) were making good steel in clay, but it had to be the 'right' clay, silica rich stuff, iirc.

M

 

[TLM]

As far as I know all ancient steel making methods are known and can be reproduced. Some details are propably not very clear but the big lines are. Yes wootz can be reproduced in a couple of different ways and the principle of utilizing 2%C steel was well known in Russia where it was called Bulat. Archaeometallurgy is quiter interesting at times.

I have one of Roselli’s about 1.7%C puukkos and it has some interesting properties, like it is an absolute beast to sharpen but once it is sharp it holds the edge very well.

 

[Janne]

According to the Internet, those old manufacturing techniques have been lost, but they can reproduce the steel using modern techniques.

Need to look into the Bulat steel, it would be cool owning a knife of it!

When I came into personal contact with the Sàmi people in the mid 70’s, I became very interested in their culture.
One of the first items I wanted to get was a vintage Sàmi knife. This was before the knife making became common, developed and (somewhat touristy) refined. But they all warned me that the steel was rubbish, usually made from barrel hoops.

The then newly made knives were made using a used Mora blade.
The Sàme then were still a people group neglected by the governments.

But enough about blades!

The term Indian Times, it is much about planning, correct?
Do you people plan ahead?

 

[Robson Valley]

I do plan the berry picking.. I did not transplant every bush to my property.
More like one of each. From that, I know when to get out for harvest.

If I were allowed, I could watch the trout drop back into their breeding streams.
With modern circumstances, it's far more fun to watch the big Bald Eagles
fight each other for fish.. HUGE screaming matches.

There's always some discussion of when to ask for bison.
Same as with our other seasons for moose/elk.mule deer/whitetail deer and bears.

Lacking refrigeration and imperfect preservation, on their traditional land, the First Nations
hunt all year long. Little by little.

 

[forrestdweller]

Have they been able to reproduce Wootz steel with the ancient methods recently

sorry for going slightly, but James Black (=the maker of the original bowie knife) is supposed to have (rediscovered) wootz steel for his knives...

 

[C_Claycomb]

Have they been able to reproduce Wootz steel with the ancient methods recently?

In those days, only one small area in the world knew how to.
Plus, one area ( monastery?) in todays Germany could produce decent steel, which was made into the famed Ulfberth blades. around 1100 years ago.
I do not think we know how that steel was made back then.

These are good examples of what I wrote earlier. We have lost the knowledge how to make certain things with primitive methods.

https://www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?/topic/30985-wootz-makers-and-production-methods/

Particularly Doc Price and Al Pendray.

 

[TLM]

While I do understand the reference to Indians all hunter/gatherers had to follow the nature's schedule or things got dire fast. Knowing it was one of the important things in cultural heritage. Without written records there is a limit to information that can be forwarded reliably.

 

[TLM]

Actually I think that in all of Fennoskandia even the agrarian communities used to follow the same kind of yearly time table as their forefathers did. There are indications that it continued at least to the late 1800s. Maybe not quite everywhere but in large part anyway.

 

[Janne]

Still do in a way.. Farmers farming the soil ( not hydroponic or hothouse) still are very locked into weather, sun hours and such. Some modern strains of produce sttretch the growing season a bit though.

The farmers I know back in Sweden are all into foraging the forests they also own, hunting, and preserving. Hens lay eggs seasonally, so they also freeze or preserve eggs.

It is a hard, but wonderful life once the bank loans are paid off.

I think that even in UK a farmer would understand the Indian Times concept.

 

[Robson Valley]

Some root crops such as Taro have open growth = they keep growing until you dig them up.
Most others have closed growth so Indian Time is time when the harvest MUST be done.
Modern grain and pulse crops are like that = they will not keep in the field until you feel motivated to harvest.

We said 100 days in the farm on the Regina Plains from seeding to harvest.
Plant and write the harvest date on the map.

Of course a very early stage on the path to agriculture is transplantation.
No more leaping about in forest or grassland. Increased productivity, protection from grazers and birds.
Every First Nations community has kitchen gardens. Some many dozens of miles away from the community.
Maybe go there twice. Once to dig up all the potatoes before winter. Back in spring to plant.

We have many species of perennial wild onions. Just yummy.
You're walking along to realize that the wild onions are coming up in rows.
White man insisted that there must be a gravelled path right through there.

 

[cariboo]

We transplanted cat tails awhile back. They are prolific. We harvest shoots in the early summer.
Ribs are feeling good enough. Back to the grinder.