Civilization manualBook 1: From Bare Hands to Steam and Electricity765 entries · 23 phases · 100 years
The Island
Phase 02 — Stone, bone, wood and fibre toolkit  /  About year 1
02.08

Hafted stone axe ⚠

fells trees and cuts poles

MakingYear 1Story day 17Stands on 13 earlier

AWhat it needs

Needs 13 other products in all, 3 of them directly.

View

Open a box to see what it needs. A dashed box is a product already drawn in full: click it to jump there. In the org chart, drag to move around.

BWhy

A handle turns a hand-held stone into a tool with ten times the force. With this axe a person can fell a tree, cut poles to length and build with timber instead of with whatever has already fallen.

CYou need

  • A ground stone axe head (02.07)
  • A handle of ash, hickory or elm, as long as the arm, cut from a young tree where the trunk swells into the root, so that one end is a thick club
  • Pitch glue (02.05) and wet rawhide strip (02.06)
  • Flint scrapers and borers, and coals from the fire

DSteps

  1. Shape the handle with scrapers: a comfortable round grip, widening at the far end into a club about as thick as a fist and a half.
  2. Mark where the head goes: through the thickest part of the club, with the cutting edge in line with the handle.
  3. Make the hole. Scratch out a start with a borer, drop in a small glowing coal, blow on it through a reed, and scrape out the charred wood. Repeat from both sides until the holes meet.
  4. Shape the hole so it tapers: wide at the front where the head goes in, narrower at the back. The butt of the head must jam tight before it can pass through.
  5. Fit the head by trying it, scraping the high spots, and trying again, until it sits firm with no rocking. Every blow of the axe will drive it tighter.
  6. Warm the butt and the hole, smear both with pitch glue, and tap the head home by striking the handle end on a log.
  7. Bind the club with wet rawhide strip in two bands, one above the hole and one below. As it dries it stops the wood splitting.
  8. Let it dry in the shade for three days. Tap the head tighter if it loosens as the wood shrinks.
  9. To use: a stone axe does not slice like steel. Strike at a slant, first from above and then from below, and knock out the chip between. Cut a wide notch all round the tree, like a beaver.

EIt worked if

  • The head does not move after a hundred blows.
  • It fells a tree as thick as a thigh in about half an hour.

FWhat goes wrong

  • The club splits at the hole. The wood was too thin there, or the head was driven too hard before binding. Bind first, and leave plenty of wood round the hole.
  • The head works loose. The handle has dried and shrunk. Tap it home again, re-glue, and soak the binding.
  • The edge chips. Twisting in the cut, or hitting a knot or a stone. Strike clean, and regrind the edge on the slab.
  • The handle breaks. A knot or cross grain. Choose a straight-grained young tree.

GSafety

  • Clear the ground and look up before felling. Decide which way the tree will fall and where you will step back.
  • Nobody stands within two tree-lengths.

HIn the story

Bjorn has not spoken ten words a day since the landing. He fits the head, tests it on a dead log, then walks to a living ash as thick as his leg and brings it down in the time it takes Sofia to boil water. He looks at the axe, then at the forest, and laughs out loud. Nobody had heard him laugh before.

IFigures

not drawn yet
Fig. 02.08-aThe axe in section: the tapered hole through the club, the head jammed in from the front, and the two rawhide bands.diagram
not drawn yet
Fig. 02.08-bBjorn blowing through a reed on a coal in the half-burned hole, Hiro waiting with a borer.making
not drawn yet
Fig. 02.08-cBjorn cutting a wide notch round a standing ash tree, chips on the ground, the camp watching from well back.use