Did you make this video, and axe, or just linking them here?
Just providing a link to the web site.
Cool nonetheless and thank for the links. It comes with no annotation though, just learn through observation. Anything you would add?
My first question in turn is. Why use fire to bore the hole for the stone, wont it weaken the haft? I must be missing something because things like that are done for good reason. If its the ancient way its the ancient way.
Primitive Technology always add notes in the video description.
If not too burn fire makes wood harder, that’s why wooden spears and arrows points are burned too.
But I would say the reason is because is much easier and faster to make the hole that way than with the stone only.
Have you read Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl. The account of the Kon Tiki expedition is a good adventure story to read. though it isnt why I am highlighting it here.
During construction the expedition team made some modern adjustments and changes to the raft which differ from the ancient design, though did so with ancient techniques and materials. They added a bow gunwale similar to a western boat to intercept bow waves they also plaid ropes in a modern fashion to lash the balsa logs together, though they did lash them, not nail them.
During the long voyage across the Pacific they noticed the balsa logs were soaking up water becoming lower in the water and might in time sink, the gunwale caused water to splash over the deck and the ropes were loosening. The logs appears to be getting worrisomely soggy on the outside and the crew wondered if they would have to cut indentations to better hold the loosening bindings but decided not one they realised how soft the outer surface of the logs had become.
When they arrived in Tahiti local peoples explained to them that had they used banana fronds the bindings would be good for at least five years and as for the balsa taking on water, it only soaks in about an inch, over the first few months then sinks in no further over the lifetime of the vessel, by not cutting the logs and thus causing a deeper surface the logs would remain seaworthy for long service. What looked like a deathtrap were good servicable logs that could be relied upon for open ocean voyages… The expedition teams found out themselves that had they not modified the raft with a gunwale the high waves would have flowed smoothly and effortlessly over the deck without disruption.
The expedition learned that the less they interfered with the original design the better it was, in spite of their own considerable accumulated knowledge of modern seacraft.
The moral is that with ancient technologies that material construction and design are often exacting, even to a point where constructs are standardised as if made in a factory. This is good fro games developers as you need one image for a boat of a given tech, with perhaps only some local changes because all boats would be made the same as if they were manufactured from a production line.
But it also means if something is made in a certain way there I usually a very specific reason based on learned hard experience.
This explains my questions over the use of fire in the construction process, and as expected there is a specific reasoning for it, It appears to me at least that little to nothing with regards to ancient tech is done on whim or accident. There is a single correct way to do build something and the knowledge is transfered down.