Primitive Technology

I built a thatched workshop as an area to do future projects in out of the rain and weather. The structure was a 4 x 4 m square covered with a gabled thatched roof where the lowest point was 2 m above the ground and the highest point was 4 m. This is the largest hut I've built to date taking 5 weeks to build. The structure sheds rain quite well and being open and without walls allows smoke to exit without issue.

I made bricks using an old brickmold made in a previous video. The bricks were made from red clay from an old tree throw that became enlarged by when wild pigs used it as a wallow. This red clay was carried to a pit near the work site and tread on till it was the right consistency. The bricks were then allowed to dry. While this happened, I obtained good quality clay from the creek and made a new brick mold, a rectangular clay pot for washing mud from the mold and two other clay pots. I then made a kiln out of bricks and fired the mold, pots and some bricks. I then used the new mold and pots to make more bricks. The kiln is easy to build and has a 50 brick firing capacity. The bricks should be useful for building permanent structures in future.

In the 6 years since I developed the first forge blower (https://youtu.be/VVV4xeWBIxE) I had made very few improvements to it's design. So I decided to do some research and development to see if I could improve it's efficiency. From my research, increasing the number of fan blades from 4 to 8 yielded an increase of 19% volume of airflow. So I set about building a better fan. Instead of splitting the rotor and inserting blades made of bark into it, I made spokes from split cane to hold the blades leaving the rotor intact. This increased the longevity of the rotor as well as the spokes being heavier contributing more momentum, assisting the impeller in winding back in the other direction after each rotation. Instead of bark being used to for the blades, simple (and easier to find) folded leaves formed the blades. These, being flexible, are less likely to break against the walls of the housing as stiff bark does. Finally, a lid was added to the housing to make maintenance easier. The new

I smelted iron from iron bacteria and then cast the iron in a mold to form a rudimentary knife, making this the first iron tool I've produced yet. The ore was a species of bacteria that lives by oxidizing iron dissolved in ground water. It appears as an orange/yellow cloudy precipitate in creeks and ponds. It's a very common natural occurrence and can be found on all continents. I collected the diluted ore and poured it into a large, porous ceramic pot I made. The water leaked out, leaving behind the concentrated iron bacteria "mud" like substance. I dried it out until it resembled rusty earth. It took a month to collect the ore for one 2 hour smelt, from a stretch of creek about 20 meters long.

I built a trebuchet, a type of catapult that uses a counter weight to store gravitational potential energy which is then used to fire a projectile via a sling. I first built the frame which was made of two tripods set close together. They were of wood and lashed together with cane. Then I made a basket from cane to hold the large rocks that would act as the counterweight. For the sling I used bark fiber from dead branches of a certain type of tree. The bark was stripped and the inner bark woven into rope. The rope was then made into a sling using 2 knots and thinner rope was used to weave the sling pouch. A simple toggle release was used hold the throwing arm in position and act as the trigger. The counter weight was then filled with rocks and pulled into position to be held by the toggle. A shot-put sized stone was then placed into the sling pouch. When the toggle was released the stone would be launched 18- 20 meters (the length of the clearing) but could undoubtedly shoot further if

I made iron from ordinary sand in the creek. Sand contains a minor proportion of iron in the form of magnetite (and some hematite), the rest of the sand being other non iron minerals such as silica. In this form it is not concentrated enough to use as an ore to produce iron metal. However, it is possible to concentrate the magnetite grains from the silica sand using gravity separation, as magnetite is heavier than silica sand. So, I made a sluice box from a spare roof tile I made in an earlier video. The curved tile acts as a chute and grooves were carved into the concave surface perpendicular to it's length. When sand was put into the sluice and water was run over it, the heavier magnetite got trapped in the grooves and most of the lighter sand was washed away. The trapped iron sand was then tipped into a collection pot. This sand was then sluiced a second time to concentrate it further. From experiment, it was found that sluicing twice yields the best result for effort, sluicing a

Naturally occurring clay usually has impurities such as rocks and sand in it. There's a way to remove these by mixing the clay in suspension and draining that water off leaving the impurities behind. I started by digging a pit to receive the clay. Then dug clay from the creek bed and put it next to the pit in a pile. Water was mixed into the pile and it was allowed to sit for a while. The water/clay mixture was then drained off into the collection pit where it settled. This was done a number of times. After settling and the water seeping out, the pure clay was mixed with grog (crushed old pottery) and made into pots. The pots were fired and of good quality, making a ringing noise when flicked indicating no cracks or weakness. This method of purifying clay saves a lot of time and effort by removing the step of manually removing rocks from the clay body.

I made a small pottery wheel to form pots on. A pottery wheel is a small table on which pottery is formed that is able to be rotated about an axis to form more symmetrical pots. In this case it is a slow pottery wheel meaning that it is turned by hand rather than being turned at high speed by foot power or other means. A wooden frame was made to hold the axle for the wheel and a cane strip was used to hold the axle on to the frame while allowing it to turn. Then a clay table top was made to fit on top of the axle. A stone bearing block held the lower end of the axle. A clay pot was then formed onto it whilst turning the table to better access all points of the pot. The pot was then fired and tested. The slow wheel is good for forming pots but is hard to set up. It also turns too slow for pot throwing (spinning the pot at speed and forming with the hands by drawing the clay up). Future iterations might be a kick wheel with a fly wheel for momentum or some other means of powering the whi