Prehistoric Experiences: Making and Hafting a Neolithic Flint Axe

morning all thanks for tuning in it's a lovely sunny day and um I've got an axe that I need to make um we're just about to start the hunt together of course and during that course we chopped down a tree with a flint X so um I'm going to hopefully extract a flint Ax from within this then I'm going to explore finding uh suitable piece of wood to make a handle for it and um we'll fit that ax head in there and also add some uh shock absorbing uh factors to it as well so let's see what we can do start off with something nice and heavy I'm instantly seeing that this is the best of the length and this is the width so basically what I've got to do is take everything away that isn't the ax there's a few places you could start um it's got a bit of a dip in the middle of this side so that makes everything around it the higher higher than the center of the bowl um so that's all got to come away and on this side it's not so bad um but how do you make a decision where to start well you can start pretty much anywhere you like as long as you don't hit um as long as you don't hit a surface which is oval you've got to go into a flat or a concavity really um so there's a few there's a few opportunities laying here I'm going to start right here and the reason for that is because I can see what's going on that's had a little flake already degenerated and I won't need to hit that too hard but what I have just been doing is moving this Hammerstone around to make the point that I'm going to hit the Flint with um kind of it's the lead ing point now otherwise if we turn that around that Point's missing it's out of the way hey P you come to watch it's always good to have a companion right you [Applause] ready looking nice inside so that's always good what you'll notice is I'm going to take my time and each time we hit the plates we'll have a little clean up otherwise we're going to end up with bits going in the legs and in the hands and what you might also notice is every time I hit the Flint I turn it over and see what I've done but the flake scar itself gives me a to move forward you'll get you'll get the gist of that as we go forward [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] gets a little narrow up this end so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to pop the back end of that off in an advantageous fashion look so now I can hit that and remove this cap which already seems like it's slightly coming a drift from a thermal crack nice handy flake there so actually what we've done is we've come right down one side now there's such a lot of width on this I might as well use some of that to my advantage so [Applause] [Applause] this stage is called roughing out is where you're gaining your control over the actual random shape of the stone and that's probably the bit that people find a little bit challenging but hopefully you can see this little formula is quite easy to follow that was the impact point of the last flake this is the width of that flake plan so I'm going to go somewhere near the middle [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hopefully you'll also notice that a the Hammerstone being quartsite is standing up to the job quite well but um we're never really lifting it very high away from the job and we're not whacking it in such a fashion where it's like an accident it's quite a controlled controlled removal there's going to come a point soon where this is out grown um outgrown the actual situation we won't need the power of that weight we've just about come all the way around this now look last little bit to deal with [Applause] here I'm feeling that this is a good point to change over that's quite a jump we really should have an intermediate one here but um I intend to now move over to combining a Hammerstone and a soft hammer and that's because we're all the way around and this will slow down the scale reduction of the actual size of the piece of flint okay so that's stage one done so stage two of um The Balancing of this whole stone is by observing what's high and what's low so this is a high Crest but this one is higher so that slightly has a priority over that one but also we have to remember that this is a dual sided dual sided um Stone so I'm going to have a look around now this heavy Crest line runs back to here and this actual area here is actually 90% set up as far as shape goes so the benefit that I'll get from that is from a very small amount of effort we're just um we're shaping this area to become a platform like this look so the soft Hammer's idea is to kiss that right there and send this little flake along here although where it gets higher we could bump into that and hinge so I'm going to put the take the flake off in such a fashion that I'm not really trying to go for too much distance that's one I'll make this my next one because again I've got a full Tous shape at the side of the stone so I don't need to do a lot here we go [Applause] hammerstones letting me down a bit but you get different types of hammerstones some of them are better off as the braiders because they're quite granular and this almost looks it's not quite even quite Sandstone it's like kind of a field Spar but uh can be a good braider the these are all balancing shots really just to get all these high spots [Applause] [Applause] off probably going to drop down to this soft Hammer cuz this one's a bit disorganized and goes around the corner and um that's much straighter [Applause] it's a nice flake look at that beautiful [Music] that that flake was actually able to do that like that because it didn't bump into anything you know high high bumps it's got a lovely Crest down its back so when you look at where where we were pushing that from lovely [Applause] [Music] quite an accoustic journey through this stone with all the Bell type shape sounds apart from the bird singing in the road noise if you're listening into Flint napping you can quite often [Music] tell just from The Sound Of The Napping how the napping is going you can make a St you can make what you're making go out of balance and um you can even mildly bend the stone that's when things get dangerous [Music] but this is all going well you have to be a bit careful that you don't make the surfaces too flat because if it get too flat then the flakes that are sent off haven't got any content to them so they broaden out and they'll finish um in a unsatisfactory fashion and you can and you can keep you can prevent yourself from um making it too flat quite simply by um lifting the back of the Flint up a little this good [Applause] so this Line's becoming nice and organized now um I'll do the same with this then and then we'll start bringing in bringing in and forming the head of the axe the intended um tree for this ax is going to be a sweet chestnut tree and we'll be making um primarily we'll be using the uh tree for sweet Chestnut B containers you can also use all the wood that you don't um require for uh the B containers and you can boil it up and you make a very nice tanning solution for uh your deer skins get lovely color [Applause] it's coming together isn't it [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] where these edges become really thin that's one of the reasons why we draw them back if you're just whacking something that's really thin you just it's just going to collapse in front of you at this stage anyway so we draw it back to it's more advantageously after one of set of words positioned to this side of the Flint that's creating nice quality plakes it's um um in the process in my mind now I'm thinking of the handle this is going into so I don't want any lumps and bumps which is going to go into that um tapered tapered recess into the handle and uh give me Hollow spots so it's quite important that I get this balanced that was one that I [Applause] wanted I know into the fact that this is going to be uh best described as a rough out that means I'm not going to polish this ax I need to make sure that all the flakes from the front end are discharged nicely [Music] [Music] can kind of brush with this and that will give me a nice organized um FL well hopefully and get that to [Music] shift so why did I come off the side of the leg well embracing with a little finger under here look and that really helps with your guiding and your steering and maintaining and containing shocks you get really sensitive ly in touch with what's going on at the base of that [Music] hammer that's if you can hit it where you want to [Applause] [Applause] so there you have it there's the ax head should do the job shouldn't it so now it's time to go find the handle now sometime ago I had the opportunity to get some um nice U and uh I have a stash of it just here this is what we've been doing all the uh ubos with which has been great fun still is um but underneath there I've stored up some Timber which I never really believed was going to become a bow and we need a reasonable size piece um fairly straight slightly tapered and hopefully with a knot at the top okay so down here I've got a piece um that's looking well it's looking too good for an ax handle really there's a good bow there but I want an axe so I'm going to use it and the position of this knot here you can imagine what it's going to do to all the grain at the top so if I was to put a hole in here cutle this back and round that head off that would be a real good security for the top of the ax handle um hopefully stopping it splitting when we use it um now I could do that with Flint tools uh but that would take me the rest of the day so I'm going to show you how I do it in the workshop um with a drill and a couple of chisels [Applause] well excuse the state of a workshop um it's been a mess in here I've been getting uh ready for this uh Hunter gather of course that we're running with all the ubo staves um but we'll make the best of it I suppose you have to imagine with all these things that um if you don't use any modern equipment whatsoever all these jobs are going to take a hell of a lot longer so what I'll do is I'll reduce some of the uh thickness of this as well probably on the band saww take the front of that off sham for this top and then we'll look at some drills and some chisels to do that okay let's just assume for a moment then that I don't have that and um we want to get through here I would then be forced to consider such a thing as this look it's a buring which has been placed in a drill and maybe using the big flake that we discharged during the manufactur of the axe itself and that would be um quite a long- winded approach of um rotary Drilling in such a fashion but um rather than boring my way through this wood and probably boring you to death in the process but that would do its job it's quite happy to go in there but that would be um a good evening's work just by itself so and then the trimming with with this you know literally cutting through this lot but that would take a while so um let's uh set about it with a drill like this visualizing that to go in there yeah so I got that in the right place in the middle oops there's a good job that came out because now what we do is we'll use something somewhat small that one and we'll go in either side and then what we'll do is we'll get a rounded chisel and we'll chase that through so I'll plow on with that and once I've got that all rained out and the ax head going in I'll show you how I'm going to support that axet in there and what I'm going to fix it with so full hour and a half later we've now got this whole fairly well trafficking through there I'm just going to set that in a fraction deeper to that but then before I actually just think about that completely finish in there in there what I'm going to do I've cut a little bit of buck skin out I'm going to lay that on and wrap that round and Stitch that up onto that and then once it's stitched on and this uh glue is ready here this is um this is Pine resin with beeswax and stirred in charcoal powder I'll actually completely dip the back of the axe straight into there and then I'll push that into that ax head and then we'll move on from there okay then that's going in there nice and snug now so bring it around to this pot there we go so this is pretty hot stuff and know I got to be a bit careful as I handle this cuz I have had this spilled on me before and um that's not an everyday pleasure I can tell you dip the back end of in there I just want to make sure that I get it all up in around this top bit too it's quite important as it goes off it doesn't build up too much bulk as well bring back this handle get that in there and then literally now there's one or two areas around here where I could drift a little bit more resin in I've got that suitably in there nice and tight and um and then I've got one more thing I want to add to this so here we are some 3 hours later and um we have an axe looks uh like it could do the job but one of my considerations for an ax like this is the top is supported by that knot we got a well um we've got a well set in ax head into that handle but the bottom that I'm worried about now this bottom can quite easily just as just as easily split so I've got I've got a um strip of veg taned leather it's about an inch wide just soaked it up a little and I reckon that we can probably give this axe just a little bit of support a little bit more support just by strapping this on here I'll strap one really tight that has got to give this handle just a little bit more go about itself well diry it's nice and tight on there I'll just put a little bit of um glue over that as well that's just going to hold that there permanently so what's left to do is um chop the tree down with it it's going to be a fun exercise isn't it if you watch that all the way to the end then um I must be doing something right I guess but there you go if it doesn't drop the tree down we'll have a new set of questions to ask won't we cheers thanks for watching

Channel: Will Lord Prehistoric Survival

Views: 118,777

Keywords: flint knapping, primitive technology, ancient crafts, Will-Lord, stoneage, neolithic, Flint axe, Hafting, Axe

Id: AENymqT6V4g

Length: 34min 7sec (2047 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2017