Primitive Technology

by David Wescott

  E. Longitudinal - transverse (partly parallel and partly perpendicular to lineal edge)

  12. Rasping - bi-directional movement at oblique and varying angles to lineal edge, with tool held near perpendicular to objective piece, tearing fibers in a sawing/scraping manner, as rasping down a tool handle.

  F. Perpendicular (perpendicular to center plane of tool)

  13. Trampling - uni-directional movement perpendicular to center plane (or to any given surface, perhaps varying overtime) and perpendicular to objective piece (ground), possibly accompanied by sudden force, as walking or stomping on a pile of flakes by man or beast. When a flake is pressed against another flake or stone, the lattermay act as an anvil, causing fracturing either at an edge or across the center of the flake.

  G. Revolutionary (revolving around longitudinal axis)

  14. Boring (drilling, twisting) - bi-directional movement revolving around longitudinal axis and focused into a single given point or area, directed downward into objective piece at near 90°, as piercing an eye hole in a bone needle.

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  Caution:: The fracture of "flint" operates as a system. Whereas each different function motion might produce slightly different wear characteristics under the controlled conditions above, more often than not a number of inter-related mechanical and micromorphological factors interact to cause any given type of damage.

  Wood Tool Basics

  By David Wescott

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  THE WOOD AGE

  Not only is there speculation and evidence to support a developmental Bone Age, there are also a number of supporters for a Wood Age. Nowhere is this level of development more evident than in Australia. This phase of development was not only practiced archaically, it remains as the foundation of Aboriginal technology today. The Wood Age is proclaimed by many to be the "greatest untold story of mankind". As we begin the story we immediately begin to lose parts along the way...we speculate on what is in and what is not in the record. The lack of wooden tools in the record is the start of the process of leaving it out of the big picture entirely. But if we accept the Stone Age record we also need to accept the fact that these stone tools related directly to plant/wooden tools - they were used to process plants or plants were used as tools to process new tools. In order to make the record complete we should add the development of wood-based cultures and technologies to the record. The problem with this idea is that there is precious little prehistoric wooden evidence upon which to base the story... there has been no preservation to give us clues. Or has there?

  Too many times we think that unless the record is dug up from beneath 200,000 years of dust that it doesn't exist. This is a difficult process to support when we have living archives among us today. We need to avoid thinking of these stewards as vestiges of the Stone Age, they are as modern as you and I. They have simply chosen not to adopt the same contrivances and distractions that we have. The fact that they have chosen to live as they do, and that their entire basis for doing what they do is based on the directions of the old ones, we need to take a careful look at what they have to share with us. Many areas of the world, especially in those places that have shown late or no development of stone tools, were covered with plants that produced edges every bit as sharp as stone. Many cultures used bamboo to create razor-sharp edges that are not in the record. We assume that they were primitive or slow developers, when the truth is that they probably chose and continue to choose to do what they do for reasons that were best for them.

  Early ethnographic reports were more interested in the products of the culture than the processes of the culture. We have volumes of information on customs and material culture, but can only speculate on the daily tasks that drove them. We can speculate how things were used and why, but it is only through experimentation and comparison with living links to the old ones that we come to a more clear understanding. It's time for us to look to the keepers of the Wood Age for the clues they can provide that shed light on this great quest for rediscovery. (Rediscovery ? Hell, we were never lost!)

  We need to realize that technology is evolutionary. And in order for there to be levels of technology for us to use today, those technologies must have had ancestors....food gathering tools possibly lead next to defensive tools. Since materials were only available in their natural form and needed to be processed by hand, it is those processes and relationships with the natural materials we need to experience for ourselves. For years ethnobotanists have championed the legitimate complaint that plants have been left out of the story of the foundation of life. Plants manage and store the energy from the sun. If we only had rocks and no plants we wouldn't have soil to stand on or oxygen to breath. We also need to realize that there is no more direct link to the primal times than those plants that still survive which are relatively unchanged from their very beginnings.

  Plants were the most familiar connection to the earth for early man. They came down from the trees...the first nursery.They provided refuge, shade, food, and ultimately tools.

  WOOD TOOL BASICS

  The first wooden tools were most likely designed to dig, reach, poke, or hit. They were field expedient (easily made, used and discarded) but evolved into prized tools that when cared for could last from father to son. Wood is subject to weathering and aging and must be "treated" on a regular basis. The craft of wood working beyond simple tools was not a daily task, thus making it something that could be done with forethought and skill.

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  STAGING SEQUENCE FOR WOOD TOOLS

  STAGE 1 - Obtain Raw Materials - select from catagory 1 -5

  STAGE 2 - Creating The Blank - break, throw, bash, split, pound, strip, burn

  STAGE 3 - Creating The Preform - strip, bend/ straighten, hack, burn, scrape, season

  STAGE 4 - Shaping - carve, fine scrape, thin, bevel, sand to specific shape

  STAGE 5 - Finishing - burnish, grease/oil, fire harden

  * * *

  The Lower Paleo Tool Kit contained such items as digging sticks -found/expedient, beveled, chopped and shaped, fire hardened - simple spears, and gathering poles used to reach high spots or into holes, and bug switches.

  Selecting the Materials- Green/Wet vs Dead / Seasoned Green woods afford you the ability to work them with stone tools. Once the wood dies or seasons it becomes very hard and difficult to work. Therefore woodworking with stone tools should be done while the wood is green or wet. This allows the stone to cut the soft fiber of the wood. However, for finishing or final shaping that involves scraping, grinding or polishing, the wood must be allowed to dry adequately. Woods that are worked green can be seasoned more rapidly by shaping the tool roughly and evenly, and either allowing it to dry, or forcing it to dry by heat treating. The process of seasoning or heat treating is very important for pointed implements, as dry wood holds a point and penetrates better than green wood.

  Greenwoods are pliable and springy. They can be used as is, bent to form after rough shaping, or they can be heated for straightening or bending. The sap in the wood allows it to bend more freely without cracking or splitting. Dead, dry wood is good for knife handles and other tools that need to be shaped, carved or ground.

  Collecting the Materials - Small twigs and flexible shoots are simply twisted from their source and used as is, to bind and attach components, or bent and woven to form simple open-weave containers. They may also be pounded to process fibers used in other ways. They may be sliced or split by sharp edges of stone, bone or shell. Broken branches with sharp points, large knots, or other useful natural shapes may be used as is. Branches or saplings being collected for straightening into spears are best done green. A hand axe or chopper may be used to remove small limbs, outer bark or otherwise shape larger branches or billets (sections of logs that have been chopped or sawed to length). Billets may be split by pounding an axe or chopper with a wooden maul into the end grain. Billets that have been split and seasoned may be split again and reduced down to the preform that best suits them to
shaping.

  Note: When splitting wood, if you want to end up with nice straight splits, always split the wood in the middle of the mass - ie. split a round billet in half, split a half in half again, creating quarters, etc. Do not try to split a round into thirds. Any splits made other than in half will have a tendency to force the tool away from the center and run out at an angle, creating an uneven split.

  When cutting saplings or small branches, bend the wood away from the side being cut. This puts tension on the fibers and allows the tool to cut through the material much more quickly and evenly.

  For simple field tools you may take the bark off to season the wood more quickly. If checking or cracking from uneven drying is not a problem, simply dry the piece in the sun for a day to remove excess moisture from the outer layers. This method has seasonal considerations to be aware of. When the sap is up, bark peels quite easily, but when it is down, the bark will hold on tightly making it difficult if not impossible to remove without a lot of extra work. Bark that can be removed in sheets can often be split for bindings or weaving, while shreddy barks may be used for bedding, clothing or tinder.

  LOWER PALEO TOOL KIT - WOOD

  Staging Sequence for Wooden Tools

  For tools found in the first tool kit. Tools requiring minimal alteration

  Stage 1 - Obtaining Raw Material - the nature of the project determines the choice of materials.

  Category 1 - live and standing, dead and standing, or dead and down

  Category 2 - dried or seasoned

  Category 3 - rigid or flexible

  Category 4 - new shoots or mature growth Category 5 - soft wood or hard wood.

  Stage 2 - Creating The Blank - burning, breaking, throwing, bashing, splitting, pounding or otherwise collecting or preparing the material for shaping. The blank may be used whole (as is), rough shaped to a general form, or split for further reduction. All woods require some level of cutting or chopping to remove the desired piece of material from its source. Burning may be used, but has more limits. Ripping and breaking shoots and branches will work for smaller pieces of material. Dry wood can be thrown or levered in the crotch of a tree to section it up. Longer pieces that need to be shortened in a controlled way can either be burned, chopped or sawed (cutting across the grain). Billets (sections of wood) can be worked from this point, split lengthwise to reduce the mass and/or access inner materials, or seasoned to be worked later. (Note - working wood with stone tools is best done green. Since seasoned woods are much harder, it is likely that very little seasoning was done in the form of large billets, but rather were shaped preforms that could be dried quickly and finished after they dried slightly)

  STAGE 3 - Creating The Preform - strip, bend/straighten, hack, burn, scrape, season. The staging sequence for wood is much like that for bone, except for the added element of seasoning.The variability of wood in choosing between those that are green or dead, wet or dry, fresh or seasoned, rigid or flexible, hard or soft can determine how it is to be worked and for what projects it can be used. The complexities of wood are well covered in the pursuit of Paleo skills. The one exception is the need to work within the grain when working the back of a bow stave. Since we stop our progression short of the bow and pottery, it will not be addressed in this book.

  Seasoning enters into the sequence, but is limited to its being controlled for the variety of tools and functions in the Paleo Tool Kits. The majority of tools are field expedient and can be done without waiting a long time for materials to season or cure, or can be "forced" by heat treating The stages may be combined (field expedient digger from a broken limb is only one step), steps can be skipped (harvested saplings twisted and wrapped to form a finished handle), but seldom are they rearranged. Thought and action must be sequential for best results.

  STAGE 4 - Shaping - carve, fine scrape, thin, bevel, sand to specific shape - Digging Stick-- Expedient wooden tools are not in the archaeological record, but they most likely predate the Stone Age. Functional wooden tools can be made quickly and simply without the aid of stone, but tools that need to withstand hard and repeated use bring to bear the application of stone tools to create a more efficient wood tool. A simple broken branch used as a digging stick will work well for a while. But after digging in the damp and rocky ground for fresh spring bulbs, the tip becomes soft and pliable, and is no longer useful. However, a nicely beveled digging stick with a fire hardened tip that has been scraped, greased and burnished will last for much longer without needing to be reworked.

  Throwing Stick - - the beginning of projectiles extending your power and increasing it beyond yourself - elolving from round to flat and straight to curved - heavy ended stick - the center of the length of the stick and the point of balance are not the same- spins off center

  At this point of development any dense stick that would carry a wollop will do. The process of manufacture is simple, like that of a digging stick. In fact, a digging stick will work as a throwing stick and perhaps was used on occasion. A gatherer wouldn't hesitate becoming a hunter simply because he was carrying the wrong stick.

  STAGE 5 - Finishing - burnish, grease/oil, fire harden

  Fire-hardened Spear - Primary weapon for a quater of a million years - spear used into the upper paleo times in Europe

  The best tools are ultimately seasoned and dried for the longest lasting service. Since working green woods is best with stone tools, you will need to dry the wood as quickly as possible to use it as a tool. If you have the luxury of time, you can simply let nature do it. However, waiting for wood to season isn't an option at this point.

  Once the tool is shaped to a rough blank stage, it can be heated near or under a fire to drive-off excess moisture. It is not held in the fire or allowed to char unless there is so much material to be scraped off that the inner layers are protected from the flame - charring weakens the wood. Forcing the stick into the super heated dirt under the fire or into the ash at the base of the fire exposes it to heat, but does not allow air to get to it, so it can't burn. As the outer layers dry out the stick can be scraped into a more refined shape -bevel, point, etc. The wood will be hot, but have a slightly damp feel to it as layers are removed.

  A Simple Shaving Horse For Bowmaking

  Text, Photos and Illustration By Douglas Macleod

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  Anyone who has ever seen or used a shaving horse will call to mind the traditional dumbhead type. It's origin dates back to 1556 in Germany according to Roy U n d e r h i I I ' s Woodwright's Work Book (1986). German woodworkers called them a "Schnitzelbank". Later American chairmakers referred to a shaving horse as a "drawbreak" and used the bench for leg and rung production. With a drawknife occupying two hands, the foot operated clamp was also useful for dressing split oak roof shakes, making rake or ax handles and more recently is found to be well suited for bowmaking.

  Finished shaving horse with bow in the place. To decrease the angle of the bench, simply shorten the dimension of the upright.

  My interest in building shaving horses began as a resident of Errett Callahan's "Cliffside" cottage. He had asked if I could build two traditional red oak horses', based on Underhill's instructional article in The Woodworker's Shop. I then began to look into variations of the principle by studying models from books, living history museums and arts and craft fairs. I sought a design that would not have the limitations of a "fixed bench", in relation to the assorted sizes of people using a shaving horse. Dr. Callahan's concern was to furnish students a bench that was easy to store and transport, lightweight and adjustable.

  Last fall, a friend and I came up with a simple design to meet these requirements; borrowing from Fine Woodworking magazine (March/April 1982) and the first Foxfire book. Students of a ladderback chair workshop in North Carolina used rough sawn boards supported by a clamp at one end and weighted with a rock on the ground at the other. The seat was separate from the clamp. The only changes we made were to use lighter kiln dried lumber, make the board length shorter and to stake it
with iron pipe. This more conventional type shaving horse allows direct leg leverage in comparison to the more awkward under-the-bench leg position with a traditional horse.

  To quickly and easily build a 2x10 portable shaving horse; cut two 12 1/4" cross pieces. Attach these blocks at the top and bottom of two 30" 2x4 legs, as though rungs of a ladder. Drill pilot holes for the screws to prevent splitting.

  Attach a 9 1/4" 2 x 4 block at the bottom of the clamp, flush with the ends of the legs for added strength and smoother travel.

  Next measure down 6" from the top of the clamp and drill a 1/2" hole, on center, in the sides of the clamp legs and ream a bit larger as dowels swell with humidity. This measurement provides a 1 1/2" clamp opening for finish work. Drill another two holes at 7 1/2" for a clamp opening of 3 1/2" for rougher shaving on a larger stave. A 6 1/2" measurement may be ideal for both.

  Then drill two 1 /2" holes into the edges of a six foot 2x10, approximately 8 1/2" from one end (on center) and ream about 4" deep. Insert dowels through clamp legs into the 2x10. With a 1 1/8" spade drill bit, drill a hole about 5" from the other end of the 2x10 to accommodate the 1" pipe stake. Drill holes through the pipe with a 5/16" metal bit, beginning at 22" and continue every 8 to 10", depending on rocky or soft soil. Drive the pipe into the hole in the 2x10 and insert a 16d nail, or the like, through the pipe to prevent the board from riding up the stake while working on the bow. Additional weight is required when drawknifing a rough stave if the stake works loose. A longer stake might solve this problem.