A couple of points. While you can use an adze to split wood or chop a limb that's not its intended purpose. An adze is used to create a smooth wood surface and that's exactly what your bone adze did with just a couple of swings. It was only when you tried to dig into the wood with it that it quickly dulled and became useless. Splitting wedges were typically made of wood: you'd start the split with a stone or bone implement and then hammer in wooden wedges to advance and widen the split. The advantages of wooden wedges are that they are easy to make, use plentiful wood rather than more precious bone or flint, and they can be made to any size, allowing you to split quite large logs.

Very cool. I made an arrow today using the feathers and pine pitch on your website and I must say you make arrow making look easy.

I'm amazed at how patient our ancestors must have been. Loving your videos as I develop bushcrafting skills backwards through time.

I've found with tree limbs, like for arrows, spears and small tool handles, getting a piece of flint the size of a cantaloupe and knapping a decent edge and then taking pressure flakes off resembling a stone hacksaw, does a brilliant job and you can notch the other side and make a decent cordage belt loop so it dangles at your side as you walk

Amazing video as always! A little tip I picked up for breaking of antler tines or pieces of bone. Instead of carving a groove and breaking it off, you can heat up the area where you want it to break between two hot coals, then once it’s been heated up you can break it with percussion

One great tool that I consider essential in my primitive wood working is pottery shards; they do wonder as abrasive materials and if you dedicate a portion of your clay to building those sanding pads, you can really smooth down any wooden surfaces down to a wooden plank finish. It might take you hours, but you'll get there eventually if all you're after is beauty over function.

Hey just to give you a tip... I used to do woodworking years ago and you will want something that is larger or more bulbous on the end and just pick a sweet spot to hit it. It carries more weight and it’s easier to use. A piece of hardwood with a large or medium sized knot Is the best mallet you can use. People used them all the way down into the early 1800s. Sometimes later. They absorb a lot more of the shock and it is distributed evenly through the wood and the chisel. The adze you made has an angle that is too shallow...it needs to be steeper. Also, the flint was too thin and small it needs to be thicker in the middle. Bone is too brittle unless you are working with softer greenwood. Denser fore tempered stones and fire hardened antler are good for woodworking tools. Quality quartzite is really good. Bipolar percussion used to make a biface chopper that can be hafted is good. I am making a broad chisel out of a palmate fallow deer antler, then fire hardening it.

Holy Hell! I can’t wait for the Stone Age bow build! One guy who I’ve noticed is very skilled at peck and grind, is John Plant from the primitive technology channel. He made a great Celt and adze with those techniques. He also made a Stone Age bow But it was out of green wood and probably meant more for survival. Love this stuff 👍

BRAND NEW! Stone Age Bow build and Hunt video is out. You can find it here! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r9R7Z81zttTHZac.html Just another note about this video. It's the highlights and cliff's notes on the project. I have tried many different bones and style. Green bone, seasoned bone, old antler, fresh antler, the list goes on and on. Making the tools is only half the battle, they need to be able to survive serious amounts of work, not just work ok for a little while. The test of time is when these tools compound tools typically fail... and my favorite most influential line of the film is, and what I hope your takeaway on the video is.. "We as humans like to try to over-sophisticate things when the reality is, the simplest answer is often times the best."

Great video showing experimentation to see what works, what doesn’t, or even what may need to be revisited with fresh eyes. When splitting wood, wooden wedges actually work extremely well! I recently acquired some large queen conch and horse conchs to try doing some green woodcarving, and eventually a canoe once I get the hang of making and using the tools.

27:04 You didn't need the stone because you had the bison horn and the deer antler but, you speak as if the horn and the antler are easier to come by than the stone. For me, it would be much much much easier to spend hours peck and grinding a stone to shape than anything else because i don't have access to a bison horn or deer antler. Sure i could get lucky and find an old deer antler just by walking in the woods but if not, then i'd have to hunt and kill one. Hunting a deer in the stone age would have been a lot more work than peck and grinding a stone.

Purist Woodworker: i don't like power tools, real men only use traditional hand tools Stone age Woodworker: i bet you peasants use steel.

Oh forgot to say, when your splitting the wood put it on a hard surface, if its on soft ground the ground will absorb most of the energy. If its on a hard surface like a stone, then the wood your splitting will take all the energy. Used to split logs with my grandfather years ago, made wooden wedges and hardend them quickly over the forge fire.

The reason for the harstone adze is because it rarely breaks within the haft like your flint adze blade. It also retains a very fair edge and does not chip or flake (much stronger than antler or bone) if it does dull it is easy to regrind a new edge. Try a medium grain basalt (less glassy and flakey) adze and trust me you'll never want to mess around with deer antler again. I actually make them if you would like to try one.

This stuff is so cool. ive been watching your videos for some time now. Ive always been interested in stone age tech but never really had the time to try anything out myself. I work too much so i guess ill live vicariously through you. keep up the awesome research mr. Gill

Amazing video! I didn’t want it to end, lol! Very educational and new perspective on tools! A lot of just plan common sense on tools as to that the tools were not fancy! They made plan simple tools, quick and easy to use and that just plan out worked, and got the job done!

Years ago I read in an article that 90 degree edges on stone work well for scraping bone and wood especially when the bone or wood is wet.

Really great video, I particularly like the chill format, makes it much easier to absorb the info. I think the simplest explanation for having a variety of tools for doing the same job would be a combination of material availability, skill set and plain old personal preference, aka habit. I know my husband and I have different favorite knives in the kitchen, and the one we use might change depending on how recently the dishes got done!

I think we all are appreciating your effort! And yours results

Nicely demonstrated and a necessary tutorial. Respect sent from Earth Clans New Mexico.

Thank you again for all of the good information.

Wow never thought id see charlie brown doing bushcraft now i feel old thank you❤🎉

Ive made bone adzes before and what you need is a thicker bone, elk and cow cannon bones work very well. Try to get them as green as possible, the less brittle and dried out the better. When splitting out wood with bone wedges on green wood i was taught to cut notches and split out section so you can control the splits. Might want to try hafting the adze on the top of the shelf, I find that creates a little less snapping pressure. Interesting video, I have found peck and grind tools are very good because of the durability they provide and the cleaner cuts you get opposed to flaked tools, they also take away having to carry a full toolkit as they can perform lots of woodworking tasks, splitting, chopping etc. They work very well in conjunction with a set of bone wedges and some sharp flake blades which can be battoned down the stave to remove large slivers of wood as well. Good one Ryan!

Speaking with some indigenous peoples when I was a teen they used water a lot of times when grinding in my area of the southeast. This was learned from the sometimes often rains we get down here. There’s a lotta gravesites on the side of the mountain where I spent a lot of my youth and still a little bit today.

Brooooo! I want to build a stone age bow too. I can't wait until your video comes out so I can "build along!"

Can't wait for the bow series!!

Thank you so much for understanding how primitive tool works. Very educational video !

Amazing video. So interesting and informative. Can’t wait for the next one

Awesome video! I also prefer simple non-compound tools for wilderness survival wood working. I use improvised Cobblestone hand axes for shopping, quartz flakes for fine woodworking/sawing, and tapered wooden billets for splitting. However, I do think there are 2 aspects of primitive compound woodworking tools that are worth considering. 1. Larger polished stone celt and adze heads were much more common than smaller ones during the Neolithic, with many artifacts having hafting grooves that had been pecked in. So perhaps the larger stone heads were less likely to break than your small stone adze head. 2. It is entirely possible that people were making these compound tools to harvest wood for reasons that are not directly related to survival. The late neolithic period had many complex agricultural societies. So one would find mega structures using logs with 10inch or greater diameters like the various Wood Henge sites all over Europe. These sites(and all the scarce resources and time that had to be allocated) were built not for survival but for social prestige or political power or religious reasons.

Im pretty excited about this series!

Great, these are questions we all need answers to. 👍

Love ur video's, very interesting ,I keep watching

Love the videos my friend!

Use the right tool for the job, its that easy , dont use a fleshing tool as a adz or axe , keep up the great videos

Wooden wedges work quite well after starting a split with flint or antler. Here in the WV mountains we call wooden wedges "gluts."😊

The hardest part of deer antler are the tips and the base of the horn about an inch to an inch and a half above the flared out part

Awesome, cannot wait to see some stone age iron smelting!!!

Great video as usual. Simplicity at its finest. We tend to forget and take for granted the knowledge and skills we have today. Our brains have thousands of years of developement to get to the stage they are at now. Back in the stone age they were just starting to develope, to understand and solves problems. They didnt know what an axe was, or what a hoe was like. They just needed a task to be done and used what materials they had at hand. Its almost impossible for us to percieve how they did things or understood things because of how developed were are now. What we would consider a long time to make a tool or a waste of time even, they would have just gotten on with making it as its what was needed to be done. Time probably never even entered the equation. This brings back memories of my childhood making walking sticks and arrows by hand with shards of quartz as scrapers. Even made a slate axe for a stoneage school project. Didnt work so well as you can imagine, but it was fun to make. Even now as a knifemaker i find myself thingking of oldschool or primitive ideas or ways of doing things, but with modern tools and materials. Like making your own tools either beczuse you can afford to buy them or they just dont exist.

I just finished playing Ancestors Humankind Odyssey and now I'm here digging these tools like Homo Ergaster. Highly recommended game to play.

I've seen the bone adze used to flesh a stretched hide. Saw it on an old video about how American Indians tanned hides. Works well for that as you need a lighter touch than you would working wood.

The adze was usually made with stone

Hi, i am from Germany and i have also build an handaxe with a boneblade. But i think this handaxe is not for cuting trees off. I think it is a better use to cut meat off from bones or use it for defense. On my handaxe, the rearside is a hook to throw an atlatl speer. Your Video is all right and i like to see the next. Please excuse my english for mistakes. Greatings from Germany

Great video! Simple seems to always be the best approach and you have proved that with this video. I have subscribed, turned on notices and look forward to learning so much more!

I didn't know how those beautiful polished tools I saw in the museums were made, now I do.

Very nice pal

This is actually useful information. When I think of Stone age I kind of forget that it is not just stones that where used.

The very first video I ran across with HuntPrimitive was the hickory bow, recognized the cutting of it in the clip inserted in this video showing the stone hand axe

With the stone Adze I think you were hitting at too much of an angle, that's why it broke. It will be a little slower but you need to hit closer to 90 degrees

Good morning from Vietnam!!!! Fantastic work ........Otzi would be jelous.

thanks for that video.!

Hey Ryan, absolutely great video on a subject that needed addressing on multiple levels. Having made and used and worked with a lot of this material myself I've found the same exact results. Although a lot of people watching this may not know how brave you have to be to face off so to speak against "traditional" archaeological ideas, my hat is off to you! Would love to discuss some thoughts and ideas that I have that you've possibly encountered yourself someday and maybe you could also answer a few things that have vexed me. Keep up this work!

This is a great resource for practical application -how the modern amateur can make tools that will get the job done without letting him down. Thank you. I am going to take the antler chisels away from this. I do suspect though that our ancestors did master some more complex technologies in bow building. I am thinking of the peck and grind axes that are found in my own country (UK) which have travelled hundreds of miles from the factory sites where they were made, sometimes right into areas where flints are picked up off the fields. I think they must have been better technology in some way. There is, I think, a reasonable argument to say that these may have been like the hand made axes and hunting knives most of us have at least one example of somewhere in our houses -luxury goods that do work better than cheap products and do last longer but which may not represent best value to their owners for their resource cost. I would like to see some comparative tests. But then again how much pecking and polishing can a man do when he could be hunting?

Thanks for sharing what you have learned, I'm enjoying the archeology you are doing. Search And Rescue is making a reluctant prepper/nomad out of me. I don't imagine a stone age nomad family maintained a quartered, seasoned cord of fire wood, but kindling seems essential. This week I've been seeking a pack tool(s) for processing kindling, and a small machete is a strong candidate, but still lacks appeal to carry for emergency use.... Maybe the antler chisel is the more authentic answer for my "EDC" kindling wood splitter?

i use a piece of broken bandsaw blade as a scraper. works really well

I am really impressed with how the stone knives saw through bone.

Fun story from when I went to a museum 6 years ago. I asked one of the people in the prehistoric area " ever heard of the game Rock, paper, scizzors?". They said " Yeah. Why?" I then said " They got it wrong. Paper gets beat by rock and scizzors if we go by stone age rules. I'll show ya.". I then produced my ground basalt Adze/ celt from on my pendant, took a sticky note, and in one clean swipe made a cut just like if I had used a pocket knife. The guy litterally was dumbfounded. 😂 Anyway, the twist of the yarn is this: different tools and materials yeild different results when applied to different tasks. You cant use just any bone lieing around for a sturdy chopping tool, it needs to be properly cleaned and free of weathering for it to be viable. Likewise, depending on the grind angle of the edge on your adze, it might out perform a flaked edge hand over fist.

that antler tool would be better suited to digging tubers and roots

Once the split is open, wooden wedges work fantastically to keep it going. Good hardwood ones just get harder as they're used. Got some I've used for ages and often pick them over metal ones because they weigh so much less if I have to go a way to where I'm working in the wood.

Good on ya mate, nice to see someone resurrect humanity's first stage of technology

When using stone, bone and antler tools such as these my tribes would build a small fire around the base of the tree that you want to cut down then the tools will not break as easily because your chipping away soft charred wood and not harder green wood. The smoke also cures the upper parts of the tree.

I don't think the composite antler was made to be a wood working tool as a plain antler chisel does just as well or better. I think the composite antler chisel would be well used for digging to pull up tubers and cut reeds. May look to some of your other videos to see if you have gone over the possible uses of composite tools.

Once the split is started when splitting green wood logs I use what we in WV call a glut which is a wedge shaped piece of wood, usually dry dogwood, to continue the split. Once a split is started like with your antler chisel, it can be continued with nothing more than a glut or two and a striking stick or rock.

GREAT tool for working / fleshing a hide

Adze were most likely used to clear roots of the stumps when clearing an area to build a root cellar Adze looks like our modern hoe, the smaller handle adze were most likely also used to primarily chop the twigs off the main branches or saplings that were cut down using the stone hand ax.

Igneus stone tools are best for woodworking. Not only is that why it was the preferred material for woodworking in the archaeological record but in terms of the applied physics that the tool offers is more advantageous in the amount of expended energy and resources needed to make most of the necessary wooden biproducts.

Nice t-shirt. Reminds me of my maternal ancestors, Ancestral Puebloans. :)

The simplist awnser is the easiest anwser. Good bit of Ocams razor there.

Peck and grind seems also like the perfect way to make sling stones.

I'm probably wrong but, I don't think the Adze was used as a woodworking tool until the bronze age? The ones that I have seen on TV have exclusively been used as small Mattocks, for digging and planting. Some archaeologist, said oh thats an Adze and its stuck?

Good stuff here. Occam's razor. Why peck and grind when easier stuff works. Excited to see the stone age bow build. Can't believe you haven't done that before? Maybe I'm thinking of Shawn Woods. I think he did a video a long time ago making a bow with only stone tools.

just a thing on the drop it after use idea, which i think makes sense for ease of travel but i also guess that these olden day peoples new their surroundings and they would probably leave them in a spot they new and probably marked along their routes to just go pick them up again and use when passing by that way again. lets face it there rocks not exactly going to waste away overnight

i believe lots of these tools are for use on charred wood

I think it is more than fair to say that you are researching and recreating the trial and error process of our distant ancestors. Likely included in the process is the unexpected bashing of a finger and the creation of new words and dance moves.

You could probably use one of those horn coral fossils as a wedge to. I have seen all kinds of those around creeks

I believe the reason for peck and grind stones is that they are less prone to chip than flaked stone tools. You can shaft them and use the extra leverage.

Maybe the Adze was used for shaping wooden statues or totems ? Edit : I ain't no profesional but I might have a good opinion:)

Usethat thing for gardening that sharpened stone on the curved stick would be perfect for making rows in soil

A steel adze at least is used for gauging out grooves or holes in wood rather than chopping down a tree or debarking wood. From what I have seen the adze stones are still fairly thick (like a slightly different shaped hand axe stone). The shape difference is that one side is flat, one side is rounded (most basic I have seen basically grinds 5 bevels in that side) and the edge is rounded (not in a straight line like some chert axes). I am just getting into the pre-metal tools, I have only used steel tools for woodworking so far.

Patience, young Padawan.

So you might try if you're making primitive tools you might try there's a sap in a tree and this sap can be is like a resin so you could turn it into things and you could use it possibly over your tool or you could use it to create a new tool possibly and when this sap dries it is as hard as rock so you might try it out and see if it works

I wonder if the physics of antler make it better as a chisel than an adz? Maybe striking a chisel transfers most of the shock to the butt of it, while when striking with an adz the initial shock is applied to the knife edge...

ever consider making a flint draw knife for shaving bark and wood ?

For something like a hand axe and a stone axe don’t you think making the axe would be less stressful on the hands, having to hold a chunk of stone and get the impact directly into the hands instead of the impact being absorbed some through the wood?

Peck and Grind to a blunt edge, one thick enough to carve a slot. flake and grind smooth, flake-able material. Tree glue inside the Igneous rock you carved a groove into and insert the Flake-able material you flaked and smooth grinded. Let it set and then haft that thing with more black tree glue. Give plenty of time to dry. Attach it to a long handle, like a modern fire axe in length. Make several heads available to replace a broken one. Repeat.

can you do a video on glass knapping beer and wine bottle bottoms.

Thanks for making this video, do you think the antler chisel was good for splitting bones for marrow?

They probably used simple antler and bone chisels far more then we know but considering how quickly antler and bone breaks down it's no surprise there's none around from the stone age.

I wonder if fire was used for removing wood and the adz used to clean up and do the fine work?

It always amazes me how ancient people create tools out of practically nothing.

I have square stone tools that have fore sides and only one is sharpened and usable. And some that have a drill on one corner. Not common but I find them

Fresh bone is less prone to chipping and fracturing.

For your first tool the dark not bone one i’ve seed someone use it for making rawhide

Here is a question... could stoneage tools withstand use on a treadle lath? Stone points to hold in the wood?

What kind of rock do you recomend to make tools that is: 1. shapeable (make the rock Sharp /flatter) 2. Sturdy to cut wood

What other ways is there for actually putting the handle and head together

You can use a good wooden wedge to split wood also 🤣 just understanding the grain structure of wood, how "easily" it can be picked apart yet how strong and flexible the fibers are. Some kinda wise allegory there somewhere 🤔

Would a good purpose for that tool be to scrape hides with for making leather

Ryan I trust your judgment I don’t need to have you show me ,or prove to me I’m confident I can trust you

Greetings

❤️❤️❤️