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View Full Version : Some basic but important questions on stone knives and axes.



justin_baker
04-30-2010, 01:20 AM
So, i havent been able to find simple answers for a few questions i have, so mabeye you guys can help.:winkiss:
How strong is a flint knife? Can you baton through wood with a flint knife? Can you fell a small tree with a flint knife? Or will it chip out on you if you abuse it? I know that they are various flint like materials (by that i mean that you can actually nap the rock into an edge), are some materials better suited for say, an axe? On the topic of an axe, is flint usually used or are there other materials used to make an axe? Do they usually have fine edges? or very rudimentary edges? Can you actually split wood with a primitive axe?
Basically, what im wondering is if i replace my axe and knife with primitive ones, will i be able to process wood on the same level as i would with steel tools? Would it be pratical to down a tree and process the wood with primitive tools? Or did the ancient people just rely on picking stuff of of the ground?

your_comforting_company
04-30-2010, 07:32 AM
Historically trees were not "downed" Firewood was gathered from the forest floor and any time a big log needed to be reduced to shorter pieces, fire was used. Fewer calories to the same effect. The Natives had great respect for living trees and those struck by lightning.
Let me see if I can address the questions one at a time.
A flint knife is only as strong as it's thickness and the material it's made from. You won't be batoning through a tree with it. It's more suited to sawing and whittling. In that sense, you could harvest saplings and small stuff with a flint knife.
If you abuse it, it will break. it has a lot to do with the way the stone disperses the force (shock) applied to it.
Many of the stone axes were not made of flint, but rather "greenstone" or other harder flintlike materials like serpentenite. Most were simple cobles with an edge made by percussion. Most weren't perfectly straight, but the idea was to have an edge that could be reshaped after use. Very basic and not very pretty edges.
I suppose it would be possible to split wood with stone, but I doubt you'd use your axe. Most likely a hardwood wedge, or another stone would be driven into the piece to split with a hardwood (like dogwood) mallet.
The core question, "Can I process wood on the same level as steel tools, with stone?", the answer is no. But with a little ingenuity, you can find better and more efficient ways to process the wood. Burning, Breaking, or just leaving whole and burning whole then enkindling requires much less energy and time.
For the most part, Natives relied on wood that was already down on the ground, and according to Mr. Brown, It was sacrelidge to use wood from a tree struck by lightning.

Maybe I answered all your questions. This information is correct to the best of my knowledge (and I've been wrong before!)

RobertRogers
04-30-2010, 09:51 AM
I agree, native peoples tended to use more easily acquired wood for shelter building, making fires, etc. Rarely would they want to cut down trees of very large size.

Flint is quite brittle and would never hold up to the work imposed on modern iron and steel.

justin_baker
04-30-2010, 02:16 PM
Thanks, YCC you covered the questions that have been bugging me perfectly :) I wonder if someone in ancient times was traveling through the forest and got caught in a brutal rainstorm, wouldnt he be screwed? Everything on the ground would be wet, if he didnt have steel tools then he wouldnt be able to down and process standing deadwood to get to the dry stuff. If you carried a good pile of sticks and/or a good amount of fatwood though, it would be enough to get stuff thats even wet to the core going. Then again, most native americans stayed in villages so they could stash tons of wood under their shelters during dry periods.

your_comforting_company
04-30-2010, 06:55 PM
Many of the Native Americans were hunters and travelers (for trade) and often held month long stints in the woods away from their villages. For the most part, they gathered wood that was already down and they didn't process wood the way we have been taught. Of course, they didn't have fireplaces that required certain length wood either.
I always carry a piece of fatlighter about as big around as my thumb or bigger and 8 or 10 inches long. If you truly know how to build a fire, even stuff that's been laying in water can be used for firewood. It's all in the building process.. the fatwood burns hot enough to burn wet twigs and establish a coal bed. then you just build up from there. I have done it a number of times and had to do it to show my dad that he really isn't a master of fire and it doesn't take 10 lbs of fatlighter to start 6" diameter logs burning.. it only takes a good pile of twigs and a few "matches" of fatlighter.
Sure, it might take 10 or 15 minutes to get a bonfire going when building up like that, but you dont waste all your resources (in this case, fatlighterd) in the process.

people survived, nay, thrived for aeons in the conditions you described above. Native Americans were truly Masters of Their Environment.

Rick
04-30-2010, 07:31 PM
And remember, unless it's a gully washer you can generally find dry sources if you know where to look. Tinder from fungus, the bottom side of limbs and beneath thick brush like evergreens where it's protected. The base of large trees will often have dry material as well. And building a vertical fire will give you a hotter fire and help dry out any larger wood that you add to the perimeter for that purpose.

justin_baker
04-30-2010, 09:41 PM
I always carry a piece of fatlighter about as big around as my thumb or bigger and 8 or 10 inches long. If you truly know how to build a fire, even stuff that's been laying in water can be used for firewood. It's all in the building process.. the fatwood burns hot enough to burn wet twigs and establish a coal bed. then you just build up from there. I have done it a number of times and had to do it to show my dad that he really isn't a master of fire and it doesn't take 10 lbs of fatlighter to start 6" diameter logs burning.. it only takes a good pile of twigs and a few "matches" of fatlighter.
Sure, it might take 10 or 15 minutes to get a bonfire going when building up like that, but you dont waste all your resources (in this case, fatlighterd) in the process.


Yeah, i know what you mean. With some decent firestarter you can get even the most soaked would going as long as you shave off the outside and prepare it right. With dry wood lets you need 5 sticks to get a bigger piece going, if the wood is wet they you would need more like 20 sticks to get sufficient heat. I guess if your going to go primitive, be very prepared. Carry dry fluffy tinder for your bowdrill and plenty of fatwood or even carry a handful of dry sticks to help out.
In the same way that you would carry wetfire in emergencies, you could carry resin or fatwood for emergencies.

rwc1969
04-30-2010, 10:20 PM
Natives probably knew their backyards well enough that they didn't need to resort to extreme survival measures. Just good preperation, caution, and knowing what is available. I'm sure they got into bad situations just as we still do.

If they were dropped out of a plane, unprepared into unfamiliar territory they would most likely be up ****'s crik just as most any of us would be. The only difference is they would possibly be able to carve a paddle.

I do know that around here they would sometimes "ring" or burn big trees to clear land for farming and such. Also, they must have been able to fell larger trees somehow as they made what were essentially log cabins, not teepees here. Other than that most trees cut with stone tools were essentially saplings 2 or 3" diameter.

Rick
04-30-2010, 10:26 PM
I agree with you RWC. There is an area called Angel Mounds near Evansville, IN. that was a wooden fort, in essence. Logs on end that stretched in a half circle from the Ohio River to the Ohio River. At one point, the wall was extended several hundred yards presumably because the population increased. They had to have some way to fell trees of similar size to stand them on end for the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Mounds

kyratshooter
05-01-2010, 03:32 PM
We use our tools to "power through" a project. Our ancestors did not.

There will be no "Batoning" with a stone knife. Sorry!
There will be no tree chopping with a stone axe. Sorry again!

Ever wonder why you always find broken arrowheads? There is a reason. They broke on impact, were removed from the arrow and thrown down. They kept using them until they broke or could not be retouched.

Axes were primarily game dressing tools.

Keep in mild that the "Ice Man" had a hardened copper axe but his knife was stone. He had access to copper but prefered stone as his primary cutting tool. He was more interested in getting through that pelvic bone and splitting marrow bones than chopping wood.

The tip of his knife had been broken and not retouched. He had used it hard and had no time to rechip it.

justin_baker
05-01-2010, 03:53 PM
Were the native americans ever able to extract any type of metal, like copper or iron? I have absolutely no idea were those materials come from, i always figured that they are buried very deep under the ground, but are there any caves or surface areas that metals can be found?

your_comforting_company
05-01-2010, 07:34 PM
There is evidence suggesting that Native Americans did learn how to make copper items. It's a subject that seems to have some dispute so I won't say much more than that.
There are a LOT of iron rocks in my area too, and I've always wondered just exactly how I could use something like that. I'm not sure of any evidence suggesting they ever figured out how to make iron.

Pict
05-01-2010, 08:05 PM
I thought native Americans were using copper up in the UP of Michigan. Copper County got it's name from the large nodes of copper you can still find on the ground up there.

In Les Strouds series Shadows and Solitude he and his wife attempted to live using stone age tools. Partway through when some friends visited it was evident that they were not going to be prepared for winter and they were left with a few steel tools as well as a supply of cut timber. It was amazing to me how much those few steel tools made a difference.

Here in Brazil the first Portuguese explorers would easily trade a few axes for boatloads of Brasil wood. There sales pitch was to gather the natives around and fell a tree. They would then say, "If when we come back in a few weeks you have a boatload of Brasil wood here we'll give you an axe like this." It was a fairly lucrative way to do business.

Mac

kyratshooter
05-02-2010, 08:50 PM
Archilogically, the Native Americans are thought to be the FIRST people to work copper anywhere in the world. Great Lakes area shows signs of the earliest smelting and forging activity. You don't hear that much in history class do you?

Copper was a status item among the NA. They hammered the native copper into plates and used them as trade goods, the coins of their time. There was a vast trade network and copper fron the Great Lakes is found all over the eastern U.S. There is some indication that copper knives and spearpoints were made as ornamental items, symbols of wealth. Lots of copper bells in graves.

Cpt John Smith incountered these copper plates among the VA Indians and was certain that if they had copper they had gold. Copper was cheap metal to the Europeans so the copper based NA economy was soon dealing in worthless currency. Sort of like us being invaded by alieans that eat beans and crap gold.

Many anthropoligists think the easy pickings in the game fields stalled NA technology. Stone/bone/horn/wood was easier to work, easy to acquire and did everything they needed at that time. The NA were not forced to seek a better material.

As far as "replacing" metal with stone, that is an experiment, not an improvement. There were vast fortunes made by people trading the wealth of American furs for the metal tools of Europe. The English Royal family does not know how much money they actualy have, and much of it was made in the fur trade enterprise of the Hudson Bay Company. Knives, hatchets and kettles were the staples of the trade.

Stone technology is a good thing to know, and I enjoy experimenting with it as much as anyone, but it is a fall back capability. I am not going to trade in my Spyderco for a sharp rock.

justin_baker
05-02-2010, 08:50 PM
Yeah i imagine that the only copper or iron that native americans would actually use would be ABOVE the ground. It would be far too complicated to mine it out. The reason i asked was because if you google "native american tomohawk" into google images then it shows a bunch of axes with metal heads, so im guessing those arent "real" native american tomohawks.

kyratshooter
05-06-2010, 02:21 AM
From what I have read the word "tomahawk" is an algonquin word that means "I don't understan you." Apparently this is what the first French speaking explorers heard when they asked the Indians what they had in their hand.

blah..blah..blah..blah ( what is that thing you are holding?)

Tomahawk (I don't understand you!)

At least that is the myth sourrounding the word.

The iron hatchets were some of the first and most valuable trade items brought to the Indians. The style axe we call a tomahawk was the standard axe/hatchet pattern of europe at that time. That was what everyone used.

The Indians switched over to iron tools and weapons as fast as they could lay hands on them. By the early 1600s Indian leaders were already complaining that the people were totally dependent on European goods for survival. They had forgotten how to make arrows, knives and stone axes.

There have only been three major evolutions of the metal axe in history. The axe of Otsie the Iceman was the first model. The thing we call a tomahawk was the second, The polled single bit axe we use today is evolution #3. It was developed here in North America specifically to make survival in our hardwood forests possible. It was developed by blacksmiths on the frontier for the wilderness life.

maker_of_fire
06-13-2010, 08:56 PM
Living with yodays mindset and yestredays tools can cause heart ake we must understand with stone tools we are limeted to stone age jobs with no time limit look for wood and stone the shape or size you need as clost as possable Natives switched to steel to up grade and save time and labor . Sorry about spelling while in school I daydreamed about this stuff all the time Make more time for what you love Time will run out without warning

preachtheWORD
06-13-2010, 09:57 PM
Sorry about spelling while in school I daydreamed about this stuff all the time

You still can't spell, Old Man! But you make up for it

crashdive123
06-13-2010, 10:02 PM
Yeah, well if spelling was a prese......perequ......preerequi.......requirement for posting, this forum would be kind of lonely.:innocent:

maker_of_fire
06-14-2010, 08:56 PM
Need some info on hand axe. could never get a rock to stay on a stick ended up using it in my hand

your_comforting_company
06-15-2010, 07:47 AM
Not sure if you read my hafting post in the knapping thread. Once the hole is packed, the axe head is hafted much like an arrowhead. Buckskin or leather straps would be more durable than plant cordage for bindings and sinew would be even better. The hatchet pictures don't include the bindings, but they should explain how to make a solid end for your handle to better support the head.

ClayPick
06-15-2010, 09:09 AM
The early Mic Mac people from here made axes from sharpened granite. Two men working together could bring down a fair sized tree without too much trouble. They also collected copper from a spot called Cap d’Or. The copper from there is naturally hardened with traces of nickel and silver and could be cold hammered. It’s cool that it was traded for at least a thousand years and has been found throughout North America.