I am completely impressed to see a normal intelligent young man unapologetically engaging in experimental archeology and making interesting unbiased presentations.
A tip to save your back and shoulder: You can do a lot of the rough cutout and shaping work with a cold chisel, which is how blacksmiths would have cut out the basic shape of the arrowhead. A few hammer blows as opposed to sawing until your arm falls off
If it's a hard tooth saw with an induction hardened blade, it might not work, but on most tool steel blades a cold chisel has plenty of oomph to get through
Or you can go to Walmart and buy a $20 Skill 4” angle grinder. Makes life WAY easier. And I’ve have mine for over 10 years. For the $$ you can NOT beat it.
Heating saw blade to red & letting it cool slowly (perhaps in ash or cat litter) would make it softer before sawing. If only teeth were hardened you could heat the blade & quench it in oil, salt water, or water to make whole thing brittle. Protect eyes etc.
Awesome video. I find it fascinating how not only humans but hominids figured out how to work stone (I’m horrible at it). I have an interesting story about fire hardening wood. When I was 8 or 9 I would craft long and thin spears with a point end and blunt end to move coals on bon fires. I did this to keep myself away from the heat. While doing this I quickly realized that these long fire pokers became much harder than other wooden tools I would carve. That’s how I discovered fire hardening. I like to think how ever many hundreds of thousands of years ago something similar happened with our ancestors.
"convergent evolution" works in more than just biology. If you take humans who all have the same features, give them a similar problem, and similar tools (hands, sticks, rocks) they'll figure out similar solutions. That's also why you'll see many paleolithic, neolithic, and chalcolithic cultures that all had similar tools such as the adze appearing from Europe to Asia, Africa, North America, and the South Pacific
Old spoons were a huge supply of metal for arrow heads. There’s a museum in my city that shows them, they would snap the heads off using part of the handle as a tang and they would sharpen it into a leaf shaped tip like a modified broad head. The rest of the spoon handles could be saved for other things like metal tea cup handles etc.
I've been making arrow points from spoons for years. With the proper handle on the spoon, you can get two points out of every spoon. They work very well, too. I have taken several deer using these spoon points.
Very interesting and well done video, thanks for posting. I live in Coastal Virginia and stone projectile points abound here. Really cool to find something that you know had to be made hundreds or thousands of years ago; makes you wonder what the maker looked like, sounded like and how they lived.
You definitely should read, "Empire of the Summer Moon" by S C. Gwynne. I would also recommend "North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence" by Richard Chacon and Ruben Mendoza. It's reads a bit like a textbook--because it is--but it paints a picture of North American indigenous cultures you will rarely see in academia today, outside of dedicated anthropology classes.
I made trade points out of iron barrel hoops which would have been available to American Indians. They worked very well and were easy to make with hand tools. I enjoyed your video very much. I worked at The National Museum of the American Indian , Washingtom, DC, from 2000 - 2004.
im finally watching it, and it is exactly what i would've wanted more from your channel, truly one of a kind of content. You walk as much in the tracks of the ancients than your telling of their story to us. Thank you!
The point about the old timers tools made me laugh. At work we have a hundred year old hammer that's "Bobby's hammer" Apparently it belonged to a man my boss used to work for; who gave my boss a bunch of stuff when he started his own business. We still use it to make pallets for shipping.
This video is something ive been looking for for years. Ive always wanted to know what various metals other than steel and bronze had been used, eventually living in Michigan i learned of copper fairly early in my journey but alway wondered about brass specifically because its so abundant not just now but even in ancient times it was fairly easy to find. I had seen a video by shawn woods where he makes saxon pope arrowheads in a similar way to your steel/iron trade points but other metals get left out and is not the easiest to learn about. This is pretty awesome and ill definitely look into making some of these trade points for hunting. Thank you very much.
Nice job on this video! This aspect of Archeology is rarely addressed. These copper trade points are occasionally associated in grave sites during European contact period. I have several of these projectiles used in my educational lectures on Archeology. While many videos cover the Old Copper Culture from the Archaic Period it's not very often to see the technology that developed by contact tribes using trade copper during the seventeen through mid nineteenth century. Recently our Archeology team here in Central Florida researching the Second Seminole Native American War in the late 1830s a portion of a temporary US military campsite was discovered where these triangular projectiles of copper were collected from this late period. Great video and good to see study of early technology reconstructed by modern experimental technology!
Wow - a subject I didn't know would fascinate me...thank you! And what a treat to see the man behind the voice. RIP to your Georgetown arrowhead, I hope you're able to recover it.
I LOVE THIS VIDEO!!! I've always wanted to see this done. Used to pick up Stone points from plowed Fields after a rain, and yes, I have hammered a few spoons in my day!!!
Love your videos! One thing to consider when looking at penetration values in arrow heads (when all other values are the same) weight of the head plays a significant role. I find when hunting, my slower, heavier arrows more often then not fully penetrate whitetail at distance. I too have friends that shoot lighter, faster arrows with a noticeable decrease in penetration.
Cool video. I think that the tip that broke was because it should have tempered.That will make it less brittle. Keep up the good work, loved the human evolution video's.
I greatly enjoyed your attempts at experimental archeology. Obviously it is much easier with modern tools but it possibly defeats the testing of the technology of the time (your flint knapping experiments were great). Ballistic gel may be good for firearms, but better would be a fresh skin over a comparable substrate, or simply a carcass. I follow you because I respect your attention to empirical evidence and argument over speculation. I found this a bit speculative for my taste. Thanks for your generally excellent work. Your research skills are impressive. I have been a big fan of your hominid series and I look forward to your upcoming projects.
Over the years I’ve collected tons of rocks and fossils but only found one rock arrowhead. I absolutely flipped out and would definitely say it’s one of my most prized possessions. These all came from Arkansas and Oklahoma so most of the fossils are ocean creatures. I have a worm as thick as my finger. Pressed leaves. A lot of shells. I hope every dirt digger can find an arrowhead one day. It’s exciting to imagine who made it, what it was used for, and how old it is. ❤️🤟🏻
My second comment. All of your videos are well thought out, and the way you describe what you are doing, and particularly why you are doing it makes for great videos. Thanks.
Very interesting test of trade points, stone points, and modern points. Did you make any of the chert points, and how long have you been knapping stone points?
At 18:32 in your video I think what happened to the point was the lack of tempering in your heat treatment process. High carbon steel is brittle and hard like glass when it isn't tempered. Low carbon steel won't harden with water. To bring back some toughness to your point heat with a propane torch or fire slowly until the point has a dark straw to blue color. If you want a softer but springy and durable temper bring it to dark blue/silver color. I would recommend starting with canola oil for a quench medium as using water can cause cracks some steels during heat treatment. Thank you for the awesome video and inspiration to make my own trade points.
lovely, i really enjoyed this. may i make a suggestion? i was into historical archery during my teens and tweens and one thing that i realized embarrasingly late is, that much of the penetration hinges less on the tip and more on the shafting. after i started smoothing the shafting as good as i could it worked a little better and after i started using fishbone-glue (which is harder than pitch) it worked much better.
I loved this! Super interesting. If I can make a suggestion, though. Get a diamond scribe and sign ANY of your points that you'll be testing like this. Things can get lost and you don't want your work to be mistaken for actual artifacts. IMO, anything that remotely looks like a replica that is taken outside for demonstration or testing should be marked.
@@rusty_shacklford signing stuff makes it easier to determine. And you cannot carbon date a stone tool. It also prevents amateur collectors from picking stuff up in 50 years. It literally takes 10 seconds to do and tool costs less than $20. I fail to see what the issue is here. It's a common best practice among people who do experimental archaeology. Why should a university have to waste time and resources in the future on something like this when minimal effort on the part of people today could prevent it?
Robert, I don’t disagree with you. But I suggest for every serious experimental archeologist out there, there are at least a dozen profit motivated fakers & flint nappers purposely attempting to deceive. They pass themselves off as “scientists” like so many who love that brand. They are experts in one thing only, deception.
Note: To improve hafting the metal points onto the arrow shaft, cut 3 or 4 small grooves on each side of the hafting area of the point with a hacksaw (grooves for the sinew strand to bind much tighter to the arrow shaft). This allows a MUCH tighter haft onto the shaft and virtually eliminates the need for any sort of hide glue or pine pitch during hafting.
There is one major advantage to a stone point, and you see this in the ethnographic record, the thicker cross section and far sharper edge will leave a much larger wound so the animal would bleed out faster than a metal point. Also, ballistics gel isn't a good simulator in the case of arrows and atlatl darts as the formulation is set to work for firearms. Dr. Devin Pettigrew discusses this in his latest appearance on the A Life In Ruins podcast.
Oh what a great Saturday. Coffee and my favorite UA-cam channel released a new video! Thank you. I need it, I have to mow the lawn today . As a little girl growing up in South Dakota you could find arrow head and what not. Some Natives would trade you for candy or tell you how they were used. Then let us keep it. I've eaten a lot of white tail deer before but none as good as the kind my Grandfather hunted in Montana.
I would be interested in seeing the same arrows used to shoot a more realistic target.Gel shows us how the points compare to each other but something line pork shoulder would be cool to see
Sharpening will help penetration a lot. Also bees wax (or lard) on the head, which also helps with rust on steel arrows. Also, temper your steel after you quench!
A little tip,I myself have done alot of bladesmithing and please do aneal the arrowhead after hardening as the arrowhead is left brittal by only hardening and will snap. You want to heat the point/ blade to a straw golden colour and a wonderfull video
Man I love learning about ancient humans and the things they did and tools they used to survive in this wild world in harsh conditions. Think about living amongst these savage animals today. Lions, Grizzlies, hyenas, packs of wild dogs etc. Just the thought of it. Sheesh!
the problem with ballistics gel and arrows is the resistance on the arrow shaft. Better test is a proper straw target and you measure the entry or passthrough. Not to mention a proper straw target will give you much more area to hit.
Made a couple of these out of some bent-up spoons I found on the side of the road (I lived near a scrap yard at the time, and stuff would randomly fall out of the trucks sometimes). Never put mine on an arrow, though.
to make the test a bit more accurate you could get jelly with tubing in to simulate bone, that way yo could show the effect of a shot hitting its mark vs a shot hitting a bone and probably lessening the impact and if you REALLY want accuracy you could put a small rug over it to simulate the fur or something
I've shot with a few obsidian arrow heads before using an osage orange bow with a 90lb draw weight and its amazing how much penetration you can get using that set up.
That trade started out in the Great Lakes Region where raw copper ore surface exposure allowed Native Americans to hammer it into metal weaponry with granite stones. It was mainly arrowheads that attended commerce. And speech known as the trade tongue. Viking visits to America may have carried the copper east over the Atlantic Ocean.
One way to prevent the shattered steel arrowhead is to temper it, essentially reheated to about 400 to 450 degrees F until it has a bronze sheen over it. It will still be fairly hard, but far less brittle. A happy medium between soft steel and hardened steel
Excellent video. Very interesting, I found it all fascinating. I would love to see a comparison of the different native American hafting techniques - are some methods easier or more effective, or more fool proof? Or are they all basically similar in how they work? I have similat questions about the many very different arrowhead barbs or different arrowhead profiles and shapes.
I surmise the oddity with the arrow penetration all being largely uniform has 1 contributing factor. The bow draw weight wasn't enough to transfer enough energy into the arrows to allow them to overcome the friction of the balletic gelatine. The resistance of the block may have been too much for a 40 pound draw weight and caused most the arrows to have an oddly similar penetration. Perhaps try this same experiment with a 60 and 80 pound draw weight and see if that changes things. If you have enough energy being transferred into the arrows that they can overcome the friction better you should see more contrast with the different points but it could also be the test medium. A stiffer block.of ballistics gel with some material to similar skin might give you very different results. Balastics gel is great as a test medium, it's a perfectly uniform material so you can test how things vary in oenetestion but an important factor to consider is fur/skin that's what protects our mussels.
As a blacksmith i can tell you your steel one shattered exactly for the reason you thought, the hardened steel is very brittle. Typically, one would temper after quenching, by heating it back up a bit until it changes to a goldish color. This will reduce the hardness and brittleness by a bit, giving you a much more durable but still decently hard final product
Temper your quenched point. The water quench probably stress fractured your steel. Quench in oil, polish, then heat to a straw color and you want have the brittle point.
Water cools it too fast. I always relate it to, if you're really hot and jump in cool water, same happens to your body... Massive shock Gotta ease into it
Howdy! Just a blacksmith commenting. For your hardened point, don’t forget to temper it. UA-cam can provide you with details on how to do that. If the point is too hard it’ll break. So we temper the steel in order to soften it up just a smidge. This makes the steel very strong. We do this for everything we harden. Mostly knives and swords
The broken arrow head might be the saw blade arrow you hardened. You didn't temper the metal arrow head so it was very hard but extremely brittle. The tempering process is important to reduce the stresses in the forging process and take away that brittleness
It should be noted that for arrows and knives ballistics gel is not a good substitute for actual flesh and bone. It's simply too grippy and sticky. It is however a stable and comparable testing medium. For bullets and other smaller objects ballistics gel does work surprisingly well though. You know just in case anyone missed it in the video.
just some advice im not 100% sure but i assume the one that shattered was one of the quenched in water points water is not a good quenching liquid as it makes the steel very hard but brittle oil is the best liquid for quenching i personally use sunflower oil for all my works from experiance i also concluded sunflower oil is the best and most accesible for the job hope this helps with any future porjects you plan
Believe me, an old tool still in use is a very happy thing. And, it's more about the placement of the shot, rather than the projectile, but of course there are limits.
Heating and quenching is to make your metal hard, but it remains brittle. You must temper it afterward..........in other words heat it back up again to a slower temperature to give it a bit more spring and softness again so it's more durable. That's why your point was so hard to file and broke. It's super hard but brittle. It probably won't matter so much on such a short point either way. I only mention this because people often thing quenching is the final process, it's not.
Cutting due to the hardness of the steel ! Heat to high temp and cool slowly to remove the hardness ! Make the arrow point then heat and quench and temper !
Let that bow pull into your hand with the pressure being on the bone of your forearm which will if your hand is relaxed close your hand. It’s a much more accurate grip on the bow as you’re not as likely to torque your bow left or right. It makes for a more comfortable release as well and your hand won’t get as tired and you’ll never have your fingers up in the way of the broadhead. It’s an easy transition and once you get that down pat you’ll never go back to the wide open hand for the grip of your bow again.
This going to be a bit long but, maybe they didn't have tim to make bronze? This is where my aside comes, both my grandparents sprinkled at a place called Travose head, Cornwall. They loved it despite being from Sheffield and only holidaying there. After a few years, a very large neolithic to iron age settlement was found there. I like that thought my olds rest with a people who shipped tin around the known world and enjoyed fine Mediterranean wine, olive oil and ceramics in return. Never underestimate the Kernow!
Nice. Just a friendly suggestion, next time you're hand sawing a saw blade, I'd highly suggest that you anneal it first. **Unless you're trying to preserve your treat. That could actually have been your issue with the break, the double treat. Complicated, but if it wasn't annealed, and then wasn't "soaked", probably had some internal stress. Also, there was a big "medicine" factor with iron or steel broad heads. The cast iron "skillet bottom" points, they really put some work into something that really wasn't any better, duller even. Kinda like the gunstock shaped war clubs. Great project and video brother. Just discussion, not criticism by any means.
The next time you use a saw blade to make a weapon heat it red hot & let cool a few times, it will soften the metal & remove some of the carbon (tools are made from high carbon steel) when you have finished the weapon heat red hot & as soon as red hot cool (quench) in water or motor oil to harden the metal again
Look into annealing the metal, the one that broke was hardened but that made it brittle. To anneal the metal do all your hardening process then put it into a 400°F oven and gradually reduce the heat over about 12 hours. That will keep the hardness, annealing basically turns it into tool steel. Hard as hell, but not brittle.
I'm obsessed with ancient warfare and weapons and armor, I'm female though is it the result of my dad was in the military or does it go farther back 🤔. Could anyone please tell me if I can reuse/ or re form spent shell casings from a gun or rifle I would like to use the back of the bullet as rivets in my accessories or something decorative.
but how much should an arrow weigh? All you need is for the wood to be straight. How to calibrate with the aerodynamic tip the length of the arrow how to calculate it based on the bow or... TY
Weird audio glitch at 14:01, you have been warned (I fixed it)
😅 i liked it
Do a video on parasaurolophus
Yeah little late for that fam.
good god that scared me
Like the aesthetics of this video. I like how not perfectly lit and professional everything is. Your style is unique bro keep doing more of these💯💯💯.
I am completely impressed to see a normal intelligent young man unapologetically engaging in experimental archeology and making interesting unbiased presentations.
Awesome comment !!!
Weirdly wordy comment
@@JordanMSeverns unnecessary comment about a comment.
@@stripeytawney822 this is UA-cam lol everything is unnecessary buddy
@@JordanMSeverns without youtube how would you know about the 4th ice moon?
That's a great idea for a series man I'm legit jealous, it'd be cool to see you on camera more doing the stuff
Thanks man!
A tip to save your back and shoulder: You can do a lot of the rough cutout and shaping work with a cold chisel, which is how blacksmiths would have cut out the basic shape of the arrowhead. A few hammer blows as opposed to sawing until your arm falls off
this will not work on a saw blade
This will work on a saw blade, I do it often.
If it's a hard tooth saw with an induction hardened blade, it might not work, but on most tool steel blades a cold chisel has plenty of oomph to get through
Or you can go to Walmart and buy a $20 Skill 4” angle grinder. Makes life WAY easier.
And I’ve have mine for over 10 years. For the $$ you can NOT beat it.
Heating saw blade to red & letting it cool slowly (perhaps in ash or cat litter) would make it softer before sawing. If only teeth were hardened you could heat the blade & quench it in oil, salt water, or water to make whole thing brittle. Protect eyes etc.
Awesome video. I find it fascinating how not only humans but hominids figured out how to work stone (I’m horrible at it). I have an interesting story about fire hardening wood. When I was 8 or 9 I would craft long and thin spears with a point end and blunt end to move coals on bon fires. I did this to keep myself away from the heat. While doing this I quickly realized that these long fire pokers became much harder than other wooden tools I would carve. That’s how I discovered fire hardening. I like to think how ever many hundreds of thousands of years ago something similar happened with our ancestors.
Definitely! No other way they could’ve figured it out other than experience. Thx for your story ❤️🤟🏻
Agreed. This dude does a better job on this videos then NATGEO
"convergent evolution" works in more than just biology. If you take humans who all have the same features, give them a similar problem, and similar tools (hands, sticks, rocks) they'll figure out similar solutions. That's also why you'll see many paleolithic, neolithic, and chalcolithic cultures that all had similar tools such as the adze appearing from Europe to Asia, Africa, North America, and the South Pacific
Wow 81 likes on your comments about fire harding wooden points. Including me !
I love that you are going all in with your education and taking us along with you👍 thanks man.
There has to be some kind of above and beyond award on UA-cam. Thank you for the experimental archeology, and really beautiful work on the arrowheads.
Old spoons were a huge supply of metal for arrow heads. There’s a museum in my city that shows them, they would snap the heads off using part of the handle as a tang and they would sharpen it into a leaf shaped tip like a modified broad head. The rest of the spoon handles could be saved for other things like metal tea cup handles etc.
Spork points are the future.
I've been making arrow points from spoons for years. With the proper handle on the spoon, you can get two points out of every spoon. They work very well, too. I have taken several deer using these spoon points.
Fun to see you making these points. The homemade paint can forge was genius. You are resourceful!
Very interesting and well done video, thanks for posting. I live in Coastal Virginia and stone projectile points abound here. Really cool to find something that you know had to be made hundreds or thousands of years ago; makes you wonder what the maker looked like, sounded like and how they lived.
I’m currently learning Native American culture in history, I’m sure my teacher would enjoy this great video on it!
You definitely should read, "Empire of the Summer Moon" by S C. Gwynne. I would also recommend "North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence" by Richard Chacon and Ruben Mendoza. It's reads a bit like a textbook--because it is--but it paints a picture of North American indigenous cultures you will rarely see in academia today, outside of dedicated anthropology classes.
@@CthonicSoulChicken fascinating I’ll put it on my list
Are they teaching you about the Clovis people that the so called ‘ Native Americans ‘ wiped out ? The original natives . I bet not .
@@factsdontcareaboutyourfeel7204 most nativ americans today (exept inuits), are directly decendents from the Clovis people.
@@factsdontcareaboutyourfeel7204 no they aren’t unfortunately
I made trade points out of iron barrel hoops which would have been available to American Indians. They worked very well and were easy to make with hand tools. I enjoyed your video very much. I worked at The National Museum of the American Indian , Washingtom, DC, from 2000 - 2004.
im finally watching it, and it is exactly what i would've wanted more from your channel, truly one of a kind of content. You walk as much in the tracks of the ancients than your telling of their story to us. Thank you!
One of your best videos
The point about the old timers tools made me laugh. At work we have a hundred year old hammer that's "Bobby's hammer"
Apparently it belonged to a man my boss used to work for; who gave my boss a bunch of stuff when he started his own business. We still use it to make pallets for shipping.
More of this! I love it!
Cool demonstration, really enjoy your content. Keep up the good work man (y)
This video is something ive been looking for for years. Ive always wanted to know what various metals other than steel and bronze had been used, eventually living in Michigan i learned of copper fairly early in my journey but alway wondered about brass specifically because its so abundant not just now but even in ancient times it was fairly easy to find. I had seen a video by shawn woods where he makes saxon pope arrowheads in a similar way to your steel/iron trade points but other metals get left out and is not the easiest to learn about.
This is pretty awesome and ill definitely look into making some of these trade points for hunting. Thank you very much.
Nice job on this video! This aspect of Archeology is rarely addressed. These copper trade points are occasionally associated in grave sites during European contact period. I have several of these projectiles used in my educational lectures on Archeology. While many videos cover the Old Copper Culture from the Archaic Period it's not very often to see the technology that developed by contact tribes using trade copper during the seventeen through mid nineteenth century. Recently our Archeology team here in Central Florida researching the Second Seminole Native American War in the late 1830s a portion of a temporary US military campsite was discovered where these triangular projectiles of copper were collected from this late period. Great video and good to see study of early technology reconstructed by modern experimental technology!
Wow - a subject I didn't know would fascinate me...thank you! And what a treat to see the man behind the voice. RIP to your Georgetown arrowhead, I hope you're able to recover it.
I LOVE THIS VIDEO!!! I've always wanted to see this done. Used to pick up Stone points from plowed Fields after a rain, and yes, I have hammered a few spoons in my day!!!
Great work !! I was an anthro undergrad forever ago -- love this !
I love this video, great camera work and great topic covered. My favorite youtube channel!!!
Nice, It's a deferent kind of video than you usually do. Good work.
Humbled by the time and effort expended on this project. Well done!
You have the most calming and kind voice. You sound so great. Keep staying awesome ❤
Love your videos! One thing to consider when looking at penetration values in arrow heads (when all other values are the same) weight of the head plays a significant role. I find when hunting, my slower, heavier arrows more often then not fully penetrate whitetail at distance. I too have friends that shoot lighter, faster arrows with a noticeable decrease in penetration.
Great video. Love to see your work in the shop.
Cool video. I think that the tip that broke was because it should have tempered.That will make it less brittle. Keep up the good work, loved the human evolution video's.
Dude this is such a great video!
right
I greatly enjoyed your attempts at experimental archeology. Obviously it is much easier with modern tools but it possibly defeats the testing of the technology of the time (your flint knapping experiments were great). Ballistic gel may be good for firearms, but better would be a fresh skin over a comparable substrate, or simply a carcass.
I follow you because I respect your attention to empirical evidence and argument over speculation. I found this a bit speculative for my taste.
Thanks for your generally excellent work. Your research skills are impressive. I have been a big fan of your hominid series and I look forward to your upcoming projects.
you had me at "paint can forge."
Love archery! Looking forward to your new material!
Excellent video! Start to finish! And wow! Nice archery skills!
Awesome video, so interesting! Thanks for sharing! Have a great day my friend
Over the years I’ve collected tons of rocks and fossils but only found one rock arrowhead. I absolutely flipped out and would definitely say it’s one of my most prized possessions. These all came from Arkansas and Oklahoma so most of the fossils are ocean creatures. I have a worm as thick as my finger. Pressed leaves. A lot of shells. I hope every dirt digger can find an arrowhead one day. It’s exciting to imagine who made it, what it was used for, and how old it is. ❤️🤟🏻
I live in NZ/Aotearoa so zero chance of finding an arrowhead. Maori didn't use bows.
Love this! My daughter did her thesis on Native American weapons. Making these stone (obsidian) tools is harder than she thought.
oh yeah
That’s rad!🌊🏄♂️🌱☀️
It’s a good day when North uploads
My second comment. All of your videos are well thought out, and the way you describe what you are doing, and particularly why you are doing it makes for great videos. Thanks.
Your channel is such a gem. You are intelligent and innovative.
Please dont ever stop making videos, you are amazing.
Very interesting test of trade points, stone points, and modern points. Did you make any of the chert points, and how long have you been knapping stone points?
At 18:32 in your video I think what happened to the point was the lack of tempering in your heat treatment process. High carbon steel is brittle and hard like glass when it isn't tempered. Low carbon steel won't harden with water. To bring back some toughness to your point heat with a propane torch or fire slowly until the point has a dark straw to blue color. If you want a softer but springy and durable temper bring it to dark blue/silver color. I would recommend starting with canola oil for a quench medium as using water can cause cracks some steels during heat treatment. Thank you for the awesome video and inspiration to make my own trade points.
lovely, i really enjoyed this.
may i make a suggestion? i was into historical archery during my teens and tweens and one thing that i realized embarrasingly late is, that much of the penetration hinges less on the tip and more on the shafting. after i started smoothing the shafting as good as i could it worked a little better and after i started using fishbone-glue (which is harder than pitch) it worked much better.
YES Thank you North my boy, i will be waiting eagerly to watch this masterpiece at the right time!!
I loved this! Super interesting. If I can make a suggestion, though. Get a diamond scribe and sign ANY of your points that you'll be testing like this. Things can get lost and you don't want your work to be mistaken for actual artifacts. IMO, anything that remotely looks like a replica that is taken outside for demonstration or testing should be marked.
Any museum can tell weather or not something is a replica. If not they can carbon date things at universities.
@@rusty_shacklford signing stuff makes it easier to determine. And you cannot carbon date a stone tool. It also prevents amateur collectors from picking stuff up in 50 years. It literally takes 10 seconds to do and tool costs less than $20. I fail to see what the issue is here. It's a common best practice among people who do experimental archaeology. Why should a university have to waste time and resources in the future on something like this when minimal effort on the part of people today could prevent it?
Robert, I don’t disagree with you. But I suggest for every serious experimental archeologist out there, there are at least a dozen profit motivated fakers & flint nappers purposely attempting to deceive. They pass themselves off as “scientists” like so many who love that brand. They are experts in one thing only, deception.
I can definitely see the utility in this suggestion, a surname and manufacture date would stop any mis-dating.
Note: To improve hafting the metal points onto the arrow shaft, cut 3 or 4 small grooves on each side of the hafting area of the point with a hacksaw (grooves for the sinew strand to bind much tighter to the arrow shaft). This allows a MUCH tighter haft onto the shaft and virtually eliminates the need for any sort of hide glue or pine pitch during hafting.
Very informative. Thanks for the hard work!
There is one major advantage to a stone point, and you see this in the ethnographic record, the thicker cross section and far sharper edge will leave a much larger wound so the animal would bleed out faster than a metal point. Also, ballistics gel isn't a good simulator in the case of arrows and atlatl darts as the formulation is set to work for firearms. Dr. Devin Pettigrew discusses this in his latest appearance on the A Life In Ruins podcast.
Isn't the thicker cross section kind of cancelled out by the smaller width of the typical stone arrowpoint compare to a steel broadhead?
Oh what a great Saturday. Coffee and my favorite UA-cam channel released a new video! Thank you. I need it, I have to mow the lawn today .
As a little girl growing up in South Dakota you could find arrow head and what not. Some Natives would trade you for candy or tell you how they were used. Then let us keep it.
I've eaten a lot of white tail deer before but none as good as the kind my Grandfather hunted in Montana.
Thanks for sharing
I would be interested in seeing the same arrows used to shoot a more realistic target.Gel shows us how the points compare to each other but something line pork shoulder would be cool to see
That was not only interesting but impressive as well. Great job.
Sharpening will help penetration a lot. Also bees wax (or lard) on the head, which also helps with rust on steel arrows.
Also, temper your steel after you quench!
It's mild steel, there's nothing to temper.
@@kovona He mentions it was too hard to file....
Fascinating material. Cheers. 👌
If you put saran wrap on the outside of the ballistic gel, it will remove the cloudiness.
Or use a torch and pass the flame over it rapidly
A little tip,I myself have done alot of bladesmithing and please do aneal the arrowhead after hardening as the arrowhead is left brittal by only hardening and will snap. You want to heat the point/ blade to a straw golden colour and a wonderfull video
Man I love learning about ancient humans and the things they did and tools they used to survive in this wild world in harsh conditions. Think about living amongst these savage animals today. Lions, Grizzlies, hyenas, packs of wild dogs etc. Just the thought of it. Sheesh!
I think about that a lot. Things that we get without effort could take them hours, days, months or years.
Great video. This Was really interesting to learn about. I found a point while magnet fishing once
the problem with ballistics gel and arrows is the resistance on the arrow shaft. Better test is a proper straw target and you measure the entry or passthrough. Not to mention a proper straw target will give you much more area to hit.
Can you a video about the role of race in physical characteristics and sports performance
You're content helps keep me mentally alive. My life is fucking miserable but atleast I have this
damn I am sorry man, glad I could help
Made a couple of these out of some bent-up spoons I found on the side of the road (I lived near a scrap yard at the time, and stuff would randomly fall out of the trucks sometimes). Never put mine on an arrow, though.
He keeps uploading great video after great video 👍
to make the test a bit more accurate you could get jelly with tubing in to simulate bone, that way yo could show the effect of a shot hitting its mark vs a shot hitting a bone and probably lessening the impact
and if you REALLY want accuracy you could put a small rug over it to simulate the fur or something
I've shot with a few obsidian arrow heads before using an osage orange bow with a 90lb draw weight and its amazing how much penetration you can get using that set up.
That trade started out in the Great Lakes Region where raw copper ore surface exposure
allowed Native Americans to hammer it into metal weaponry with granite stones. It was
mainly arrowheads that attended commerce. And speech known as the trade tongue.
Viking visits to America may have carried the copper east over the Atlantic Ocean.
One way to prevent the shattered steel arrowhead is to temper it, essentially reheated to about 400 to 450 degrees F until it has a bronze sheen over it. It will still be fairly hard, but far less brittle. A happy medium between soft steel and hardened steel
18:57 Steel work hardens, Stainless steels even worse, that is why after hammering one out of something else it is going to need tempered.
Excellent video. Very interesting, I found it all fascinating. I would love to see a comparison of the different native American hafting techniques - are some methods easier or more effective, or more fool proof? Or are they all basically similar in how they work? I have similat questions about the many very different arrowhead barbs or different arrowhead profiles and shapes.
I surmise the oddity with the arrow penetration all being largely uniform has 1 contributing factor.
The bow draw weight wasn't enough to transfer enough energy into the arrows to allow them to overcome the friction of the balletic gelatine. The resistance of the block may have been too much for a 40 pound draw weight and caused most the arrows to have an oddly similar penetration.
Perhaps try this same experiment with a 60 and 80 pound draw weight and see if that changes things.
If you have enough energy being transferred into the arrows that they can overcome the friction better you should see more contrast with the different points but it could also be the test medium. A stiffer block.of ballistics gel with some material to similar skin might give you very different results.
Balastics gel is great as a test medium, it's a perfectly uniform material so you can test how things vary in oenetestion but an important factor to consider is fur/skin that's what protects our mussels.
Thanks for the cool test. I'm amazed that the Exodus arrowhead was so impressive.
As a blacksmith i can tell you your steel one shattered exactly for the reason you thought, the hardened steel is very brittle. Typically, one would temper after quenching, by heating it back up a bit until it changes to a goldish color. This will reduce the hardness and brittleness by a bit, giving you a much more durable but still decently hard final product
Also, really cool video, love this channels dedication to history and detail
Temper your quenched point. The water quench probably stress fractured your steel. Quench in oil, polish, then heat to a straw color and you want have the brittle point.
Water cools it too fast. I always relate it to, if you're really hot and jump in cool water, same happens to your body... Massive shock
Gotta ease into it
The weapons made by the Native Americans are sooo good and gorgeous.
They lived in the stone age....
@@jimbob465 Point is?
@@Michael_De_Santa-Unofficial
My point is calling sharp rocks tied to sticks "sooo good" is ridiculous
@@jimbob465 Alright. You're free to disagree. But I like Native American weapons, specifically the Tomahawk and the knives.
@@Michael_De_Santa-Unofficial tomahawks and knives which were made of steel, by white people....
Well done, my friend!
You make some excellent points in this video.
Howdy! Just a blacksmith commenting. For your hardened point, don’t forget to temper it. UA-cam can provide you with details on how to do that. If the point is too hard it’ll break. So we temper the steel in order to soften it up just a smidge. This makes the steel very strong. We do this for everything we harden. Mostly knives and swords
The broken arrow head might be the saw blade arrow you hardened. You didn't temper the metal arrow head so it was very hard but extremely brittle. The tempering process is important to reduce the stresses in the forging process and take away that brittleness
I thought the same but because of the water quench. Quenching in water can make the blade brittle or even crack it immediately
Thank you so much for your time and efforts! This was very informative and interesting! We really appreciate your videos! Happy hunting! 🦬
It should be noted that for arrows and knives ballistics gel is not a good substitute for actual flesh and bone. It's simply too grippy and sticky.
It is however a stable and comparable testing medium.
For bullets and other smaller objects ballistics gel does work surprisingly well though.
You know just in case anyone missed it in the video.
just some advice im not 100% sure but i assume the one that shattered was one of the quenched in water points
water is not a good quenching liquid as it makes the steel very hard but brittle
oil is the best liquid for quenching i personally use sunflower oil for all my works
from experiance i also concluded sunflower oil is the best and most accesible for the job
hope this helps with any future porjects you plan
I think the bigger problem was the lack of tempering, although the roughnes of water as a quenching medium also certainly played a part.
thank you for sharing 👍
awesome video man
Believe me, an old tool still in use is a very happy thing.
And, it's more about the placement of the shot, rather than the projectile, but of course there are limits.
Thanks for posting quality material. I look forward to your future videos. Will you consider making your own primitive bow?
Heating and quenching is to make your metal hard, but it remains brittle. You must temper it afterward..........in other words heat it back up again to a slower temperature to give it a bit more spring and softness again so it's more durable. That's why your point was so hard to file and broke. It's super hard but brittle. It probably won't matter so much on such a short point either way. I only mention this because people often thing quenching is the final process, it's not.
One of the old weapons I have been fascinated with lately is slings. Another projectile weapon that can use a multitude of projectiles
Cutting due to the hardness of the steel !
Heat to high temp and cool slowly to remove the hardness ! Make the arrow point then heat and quench and temper !
Wasn't ready for the Old man's tools story.
respect
Let that bow pull into your hand with the pressure being on the bone of your forearm which will if your hand is relaxed close your hand. It’s a much more accurate grip on the bow as you’re not as likely to torque your bow left or right. It makes for a more comfortable release as well and your hand won’t get as tired and you’ll never have your fingers up in the way of the broadhead. It’s an easy transition and once you get that down pat you’ll never go back to the wide open hand for the grip of your bow again.
This going to be a bit long but, maybe they didn't have tim to make bronze? This is where my aside comes, both my grandparents sprinkled at a place called Travose head, Cornwall. They loved it despite being from Sheffield and only holidaying there. After a few years, a very large neolithic to iron age settlement was found there. I like that thought my olds rest with a people who shipped tin around the known world and enjoyed fine Mediterranean wine, olive oil and ceramics in return. Never underestimate the Kernow!
Nice. Just a friendly suggestion, next time you're hand sawing a saw blade, I'd highly suggest that you anneal it first. **Unless you're trying to preserve your treat. That could actually have been your issue with the break, the double treat. Complicated, but if it wasn't annealed, and then wasn't "soaked", probably had some internal stress.
Also, there was a big "medicine" factor with iron or steel broad heads. The cast iron "skillet bottom" points, they really put some work into something that really wasn't any better, duller even. Kinda like the gunstock shaped war clubs.
Great project and video brother. Just discussion, not criticism by any means.
The next time you use a saw blade to make a weapon heat it red hot & let cool a few times, it will soften the metal & remove some of the carbon (tools are made from high carbon steel)
when you have finished the weapon heat red hot & as soon as red hot cool (quench) in water or motor oil to harden the metal again
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't annealing the metal after hardening help keep the hardness but not the brittleness?
Great video. 👍
Look into annealing the metal, the one that broke was hardened but that made it brittle. To anneal the metal do all your hardening process then put it into a 400°F oven and gradually reduce the heat over about 12 hours. That will keep the hardness, annealing basically turns it into tool steel. Hard as hell, but not brittle.
I wonder about flattering teaspoons and putting an edge onto it?
I'm obsessed with ancient warfare and weapons and armor, I'm female though is it the result of my dad was in the military or does it go farther back 🤔. Could anyone please tell me if I can reuse/ or re form spent shell casings from a gun or rifle I would like to use the back of the bullet as rivets in my accessories or something decorative.
Archery videos? I'm in!
but how much should an arrow weigh? All you need is for the wood to be straight. How to calibrate with the aerodynamic tip the length of the arrow how to calculate it based on the bow or... TY
I think it needs to be tempered with a small blowtorch focused on the broadest point of the blade. Otherwise it is liable to snap or shatter.