Stone Axes, Adzes, Celts and Chisels-Pecking and Grinding Class 

dasdew2 It is a four day class so after the students spend three days making the head they only have a day to bust out the handle...hence metal tools. Not to mention it is much easier for me to have a set of 12 metal tools than 12 stone tools for students to beat on.

+ROOTS School 3 days making the head?? It shouldn't take that long though it can be done in just a few hours.

+Bea Al Making a good head that will last, Slow and steady will win the race at building.

Harley Inglis it still doesn't take days

Bea Al but still not everyone has time to do that. If I was a wild person yes I could.

Same

Me to

I actually did run off into the woods and made shit.

What kind of shit? Stinky?

yeah- this is the only thing that makes sense these days- make tools out of stone and go build...go eat...

Thanks!

Many thanks!

***** Doesn't make sense, you spend all that time making the stone axe head which is genuine, but then use modern steel tools to make the wood handles? All these classes cheat..Why cant you just do the real thing and show everything?

5tonyvvvv Days of doing the same thing with a coarse stone. DAYS more.

Janine Cat What?

***** I just wanted to see how it was done with all stone tools, thats all man You dont have to write a book. I see the same thing with people making bows, with stone tools. But first they use a chain saw to cut the tree, HA!

l

Then do it. Just go out in the woods and have fun.

William White he probably doesn’t have the time

HipposHateWater when adze is lyfe 😂👌

Best of luck! I recommend counting 100 pecks or grinds before you expect to see a change!

one good plus for the stone axe is it bounces so you don't have to pull it off the wood like you would a steel axe

That is a different tool altogether, it’s called an adze. The axe head is turned 90 degrees from where it is on an axe. The axe’s head is vertical, the adze’s head is horizontal. I know the adze was used for planing floor boards to size for ships in recent history. As for why they mounted their axe heads in this manner is personal preference I assume, and the purpose of the tool, as well as the maker, these would have been made by the user, so each is unique.

It's easier than you think to make them I just finished a mortar and pestle just 2 days ago. Just start pecking I'd like to know how many pecks I've made in the last 16 years doing this i would imagine over couple of hundred million times.

Are you sure it's not soap stone? I've got what I've been told is a fish basket weight it's circular almost 8" across with a 7/8" hole in center and 1 1/4" thick made out of soap stone.

Not exactly, a celt is one mortised through the handle and chops differently than a stone axe. An adze bit is angle 90 degrees to allow for different chopping.

Not that I have seen, its a tough skill that is a bit tedious and brutal so not too many people take it on.

No, sorry!

I use elm in this video but a lot of the more flexible hardwoods would work fine.

Roots School thx man 🙏

Yes but they would be brittle compared to steel.

You could but it would have to be something you hang up on the wall. It would break if you tried to hit something with it

8 years old and up, depends on the class rootsvt.com

Mostly here we are using green stone which is a meta basalt. In general, fine grained and hard as you can find it will make a good ground tool.

Greenstone, which is a metabasalt, and a lot of basalts work well.

I get it. Sometimes I approach things from a purist mindset. Of course, the old joke was bout how far to take it, did you drive a car to the school, did you hunt the food you ate while making it with traditional weapons? Etc. In this case, it is a class setting where as the instructor my main goal was to help folks understand how to shape the stone and haft it. The stone shaping is done with all traditional methods and it takes bout 3 full days of hardworking pecking and grinding. At this point I have to choose between having people use stone tools which requires using green wood and working it 95% of the way and then carefully curing without checking over the course of a few weeks, or using steel tools and already seasoned wood and having students leave with a finished and functional tool.

Green Stone

Roots School thanks

Sandstone slabs with sand and water added. Then add in a crazy amount of elbow grease.

Its greenstone, a meta-basalt that beds along the Appalachian chain

Si

For the billet? The billet is dogwood.

Its a technique called block n block, and its more like flint knapping but instead of hitting the percussor against a rock you hit the rock against the percussor. The wooden billet, also known as a baton is the hardest dry hardwood you can get.

@@ROOTSSchoolVT thanks. Would fire hardened oak work for the billet?

Yeah, it should, even just seasoned would be good.

@@ROOTSSchoolVT thanks

This is a four day class we run every spring in Vermont.

Roots School approximately how long does it take to make a axe head, then the entire axe itself

Mostly this video has greenstone, a metabasalt

Roots School thanks

***** Thanks :)

Does it go back to the stone age ??

ne ne stvarno ne ali da li mozda znas sta je ono na sta je vuka pa ce ostrilo

serbianGameplays Ne znam naziv te vrste kamena, u mom kraju je takav kamen crvene boje !! U njemu je bezbroj vrlo sitnih kristala belo-žućkaste boje, cenim da je to kvarc !! Poseduje mogućnost oštrenja metalnih predmeta, ček sam negde video pažljivo oblikovan i probušen takav kamen pa navučen na drvenu osovinu !?! Jedan lik ručno okreće taj kamen na osovini, a drugi lik oštri neku alatku !!! Ovde na videu imaju i sinterovane brusne kamenove, kakvi se upotrebljavaju u industriji ! Prvi, veliki komad kamena je moguće i da je prirodan, malo vode po njemu, možda i kvarcni pesak pridodat i eto ti "oštrača" !!! Vozdra.

+Milutin958 Many would say that we never left

da li znas na sta je ostrio

These tools allow us to chop down trees and then shape them into tool handles, bows, shelter poles, etc. Since we are not doing much farming with stone tools and the ground is very rocky here we focus on that. We do make chisels and the celt head work great for splitting if you take them out of the handle.

+menjo bleeko I agree, when my teacher, Erret Callahan told me 65 degrees i was not too confident it would cut. But it stone, and not nearly as tough as steel when thin, so it makes sense. We mostly work wood green(soft) till the project is 90% done then let it season and finish...

un momento yo nunca repuruebo historia

Yeah, just showing folks some scenes from the class we run!

+tanfo8 This is a video of a class in which we have 4 days to teach people how to peck and grind and haft tools. If I make the class longer it has to be more expensive, ie less accessible. So when it makes sense for people to do easy wood working tasks in a class setting, then I have then use metal tools. I demonstrate how to use stone, tools, and how it is different. One of the major differences, which I am sure you know since you know so much about stone age tool making, is that most stone age wood work is done on green wood, which is then carefully dried so it does not crack, and then finished, since green wood is so much softer than dry hardwood. This process can take weeks as you need to dry it slowly and carefully to avoid checking. So I have people use dry seasoned hardwood, which is painfully slow to work with stone tools. I also dont have 15 pecked and ground stone chisels and axes lying around to let students beat on. If you want to make some and donate them to the school, we will surely let the students use them.

+Weefurny Check out the series of knapping videos I just posted, I dont shut up at all!