Primitive Technology

With the wet season here, it's time to plant this years crop of yams. The previous yam garden, a large basket type enclosure, worked well in discouraging predators from eating the growing tubers. But with time the cane enclosure rots. So I switched to a method of protecting yams by planting the seed yams under a pile of rocks. Early tests prove that this method protects them from being eaten. The rocks are too heavy for scrub turkeys to lift and wild pigs seem not to associate the pile of rocks with food. So the next step was to make a garden consisting of individual mounds fortified with neat stonework. This was done by building layers of stone circles around the mound while adding soil with each layer. A yam bulb was planted in each mound during this process. A wooden stake was placed in each mound for the yam vine to grow up and horizontal rafters were tied to the top of these stakes to give the vines something to grow across. By the end of the project the yams had started growing with some coiling around the stakes.

With the wet season at it's peak, a shelter was needed to keep tools and materials dry as well as providing a dry work-space for future projects. So after some procrastination, I decided on a low roof design. A 2.5 m by 2.5 m hut with a ridge 2 m above the ground and side walls 75 cm high. Upright posts were put in at about 60 cm intervals along the 3 walls. The front was left open as this is more of an open workshop than a dwelling. Grass was collected from high up in the hill as it will not grow in the darker, lowland forest. Carrying the thatch to the hut was the most labor intensive part taking approximately 36 hours over the course of more than a week. The walls were then coated in soft, grey mud from a nearby clearing. The floor was coated in the same material. A large amount of rain fell due to a nearby tropical cyclone passing to the north. Despite this there were only a few leaks (mainly on the ridge line) that were subsequently patched with more grass. A fire was then lit with fire-sticks despite the damp conditions. This was done to help dry the mud walls and floor. The end of the video shows the yam mounds behind the hut doing well from of the torrential rain. The shelter will suffice for the remaining two months of rain that is expected to fall.

I made some fired clay bricks as an experiment to see if I could make a permanent, waterproof, building material. A brick mold was fashioned from clay and then fired in existing kiln. This was then used to make bricks formed from clay from the creek bank. These bricks were then stored in the hut I built last episode to dry. Using half the hut I could fit 40 bricks. These, when semi dry, were then stacked around the fire to dry out. A small kiln was then assembled from un-fired bricks and used to fire 4 bricks as an experiment. It was about 50 cm tall and 25 cm square in cross section. The fired clay bricks were water resistant, they didn't dissolve when submerged in water. I will use these bricks to make a larger kiln and hopefully larger huts later on. I estimate that a kiln with a 50 cm cube ware chamber could hold 40 bricks without being so cramped the flames can't get through. The good thing about using bricks to make kilns is that they can be constructed quickly without waiting for the layers to dry, they only crack along the joints between bricks while remaining structurally stable, they can be disassembled and built elsewhere or they can be reconfigured/enlarged to make different types of kilns. Repairs are also possible too.

I gathered polynesian arrowroot, grated it, extracted and dried the starch and cooked it into gelatinous, pancake shaped food that tasted like rice noodles. Polynesian arrow root is a plant in the same family as yams but with a different growth habit. It has a single, branching leaf and a single tuber below ground. They were brought to Australia about 7000 years ago as one of the "canoe" plants carried by Polynesian seafarers and grow wild in the hills near my hut to this day. The tubers are rich in starch but have a bitter compound that needs to be leached out with water to be made edible. This same compound is traditionally a medicine in small quantities for treating a range of illnesses from gastrointestinal upset to snake bite. I dug up the tubers which took about 3 minutes to do per plant, yielding one golf ball sized tuber each. These were then washed and grated into a pot using a roof tile. The resulting mash was mixed with water and allowed to settle. The white milky water was then scooped into a second pot and the starch was allowed to settle. The water was then poured off and more starch water was tipped in. At this stage the starch was still bitter, so it was mixed with water, allowed to settle and the clear water above was poured off several times removing this bitterness. When it tasted good, the paste was put onto a tile to dry over a fire. Some of it cooked and became small rubbery pieces of starch. The dry flour was stored in a pot. Some of this was then mixed into a paste and cooked on a tile like a pancake. It turned clear when cooked and has a rubbery texture. It tasted just like a rice noodle which is unsurprising considering the ingredients are nearly the same. Starch is the largest carbohydrate in the human diet. Polynesian arrowroot starch contains 346 calories per 100 g (wheat contains 329) and so the discovery of this staple food is fairly significant. It can be stored indefinitely if kept dry and away from weevils or can be stored as live

I built a cross draft kiln and fired a pot in it to test ideas about how cross draft kilns operate. A cross draft kiln is one in which the flames travel from the firebox and across a horizontal wear chamber before traveling vertically up a chimney and out of the kiln. Unlike an updraft kiln there is no perforated floor that the pottery sits on. Instead the pot sits on the floor of the wearchamber as the flames pass around it. Taking soil from a previous kiln and mixing it into mud, I formed the kiln so it was less than a meter long. It was 25 cm wide and tall inside the tunnel formed by the kiln though a slight curve was added to the tops of the side walls. The walls were covered with sticks and a roof of mud was put in place onto this. A chimney about 25 cm wide and 65 cm in total height was made at the end of the kiln to draw flames through the kiln due to natural draft. 5 grate bars made of clay were installed in the firebox to make combustion more efficient. A side door was cut into the kiln to access the ware chamber (25 x 25 cm). Clay was taken from the creek bank and mixed with previous crushed pottery as grog. It was formed into a pot with a pouring spout. This was dried and then placed into the kiln. The kiln was fired with the flames acting as planned and the pot was fired in a relatively short 1 hour and 20 minutes. It would have been a shorter firing time had the kiln not still been wet. The pot was tested with water and held it satisfactorily. Cross draft kilns are an apparent improvement on updrafts with the reasoning being that more efficiently retain heat as the hot gasses don't immediately exit the kiln leaving the colder gasses inside. Hot spots are less likely to develop giving a more uniform firing of the pottery. Cross draft kilns developed early in Asia, evolving from the practice of excating tunnels into the side of hills to fire pottery. It's unknown whether the European cross drafts were adopted from the east or were the result of the g

My hut burned down after I left a fire untended in it. I needed a new one quickly. Fortunately I had already cleared a new spot earlier in the wet season for such a purpose. I constructed the new hut from wood and palm thatch. It was 3 x 3m in floor plan and a total of 3m high with 1.5m high side walls. 4 posts were put into the ground and a pyramidal roof was built on top of this. The frame was then thatched with palm fronds (which are less flammable than grass thatch but don't tend to last as long in wet weather). After finishing the hut I collected the possessions from the last hut and moved them into the new one. Yams from the garden were dug up but there weren't many due to the soil being compacted and low in organic matter. A yam was cooked by wrapping it in clay and baking it in the hot coals for 30 minutes. Now I have a larger hut where I can continue to make projects despite the minor set back that has just occurred.

I made clay bricks, air dried them and then built a dry stacked (no mortar) wall from those bricks. Brick making is a time consuming process. To amass enough bricks for a large scale firing will take a long time to do. In the previous hut (that burnt down) bricks were stored inside the hut out of the rain to dry before firing. This took up considerable space within the hut. So with this hut, bricks were stored under the eves of the hut forming a temporary wall around the work space. Clay was taken from a pit and carried to the hut site. The clay was mixed with water in a pit. The ceramic brick mold (made of fired clay in a previous video) was soaked in water and wood ash to make it slippery so that the clay would slide out easily. Bricks were then formed on the floor of half the hut. When the bricks had dried enough they were then stacked under the eaves to form a growing wall. I'll continue making clay bricks and when an opportunity rises, I will take them out and fire them, upgrading them from adobe bricks to fired clay bricks. These will in theory be used in a permanent hut constructed from bricks and mortar.

This video coincides with the release of my new book "Primitive technology", which releases exactly 4 years and 6 months since my first video post on this channel. This video compilation, as well as the book, outlines all the skills and achievements I've attained in this time period using research, hard work and trial and error. Writing this book is something I wanted to do even before making videos and launching this channel. I wanted to offer something tangible that benefited those who had the same keen interest in primitive technology as I do. With that, I thank each and every one of you for your continued support throughout the years, and I really hope you enjoy the book. You can pre-order here: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/primitive-technology - John Plant

Primitive Technology: Pot Made of Wood Ash - new clay alternative created by me.