Tying on Beothuk Points

Chert and Iron
Beothuk arrowhead
Reproductions

I'm working on a few Beothuk arrows today.  I'm tying points and feathers on to the pine shafts so that I can ochre stain them.  Since I had a few modified iron nail points on hand from a previous project, I decided to try hafting one on to a complete arrow.   The introduction of iron nails to the Beothuk tool kit changed the way points were hafted, although you can still use sinew and glue to tie them to the shaft.  The main difference is that the long tangs would have been tied into a narrow channel carved down along the arrow shaft from the tip, rather than inserted into a cut slot, like the knapped stone points.  The end result would have differed from the stone tipped points in a couple of ways - first the points made on nails would have been slightly heavier, giving more forward weight to the arrow and secondly the prominent barbs on the corner notched chert arrowheads are gone from the slender, leaf-shaped arrowheads hammered out of iron nails.  Would the heavier points penetrate farther and eliminate the need for barbs to prevent the arrow from backing out of the wound?  Or was it just too much of a hassle to cut and file barbs into a hammered iron point?

A side view of an iron point (top) and a stone point (bottom).  The long tang of the iron point needs a lot more sinew lashing to completely encase it.  

Chert, corner notched Recent Indian projectile point reproduction

I think you can see a little more clearly that iron tang fits in a slot running along the outside edge of the wood arrow shaft.  The two points have comparable cutting edges and angles, but the iron point is a little heavier and lacks the prominent barbs of the stone point.  

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Needles and bones

Copper needle in patinating solution

I had a full day in the workshop yesterday - probably the only one I'll get this week, so I was relieved to make some progress on the big Central Arctic order.  The fox bone necklace is pretty much finished, I just need to size the sinew cord and let the bones dry out a bit more.  They are damp from tea staining.  I also made a couple needles for the order - one from copper (right) and one from bird bone.  The bird bone needle is completely finished and the copper needle is sitting in a Miracle Gro and red wine vinegar solution so that it will grow a nice warm green patina.

The tea stained the cartilage rich areas most

I don't have the actual artifacts to work from for this project and the only reference photos that I are from the Canadian Museum of Civilization's artifact catalog.  I don't have permission to reproduce those images on this blog, so if you'd like to see the original artifacts, you can check them out here:

Needle IV-D-329

Needle IV-D-330

Necklace IV-D-371

hammered needle blank and copper wire

To make the copper needle, I started with a short section of heavy copper ground wire - the same stuff that I use when I make copper tipped pressure flakers.  The finished needle needed to be 7.2 cm long, 3 mm wide and 1 mm thick.  I started cold hammering a section of wire about 1 inch long (slightly shorter than the one in the photo) and that gave me a blank the correct length, but about twice as thick and wide as I needed it to be.  I used the wet grinding wheel to slowly grind it down to the correct size.  I tapped it with the hammer from time to time, partly to help thin out thick spots, but also to keep it from becoming too smooth and regular.  I used a rotary tool to drill the hole while the needle was still a little thicker than it needed to be, so that I'd have room to correct any errors in the eye's shape or placement. 

Antiquing bones in tea and copper in miracle gro and vinegar

Eventually I ground the needle down to the final dimensions.  The hammering hardens the copper and despite its small dimensions, it is surprisingly stiff.  You could certainly bend it if you tried, but its much stronger than it looks.  Its all done, except for the antiquing, which I apply by letting it sit in an evaporating bowl of red wine vinegar saturated with Miracle Gro.  The recipe I use is outlined in this blog post: Patinating Copper Experiments. 

bone needle and sinew

The client also requested a bone needle of similar dimensions.  I made it much the same as the copper needle, except I cracked it out of a hollow bird bone, rather than hammer it out of a copper wire.  This gave me a 1mm thick needle blank, which I ground into its final shape on the wet wheel and a bit of sandpaper.  I left a little more bone above the eye of the needle, because the bird bone is not as strong as the copper and the extra material will help keep the needle from splitting.  I finished it with a quick dip in a cup of hot tea to give it a bit of a warmer antiqued look than stark white bone.

Bird Bone needle with sinew thread, 7.2cm x 0.3cm x 0.1cm

Needles; copper (L), Bone (R)

The copper needle is much heavier than the bone needle, although they have nearly identical dimensions.  In the past, the bone needle would have been much quicker and easier to make, while the copper needle would be a more durable and valuable tool.

Copper shows up frequently in ethnographic and archaeological collections from the Central Arctic and this set of reproductions will have several copper endblades, arrowheads, rivets, and scrapers to show off in the upcoming weeks.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

A Sampling of Slate Ulus

Ulu Rhapsody

Here's a look at the 5 ulus I was working on.  I was experimenting with using sinew and sealskin laces to tie drilled slate blades onto wood and whalebone handles.  The inspiration for the 3-holed blade comes from an ulu on display in The Rooms in St. John's.  I found the single holed version in an illustration on the SILA website, which was put online by Isuma Productions out of Igloolik to provide supplemental information for their film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.  Several of the other handles are based on artifacts that I found by searching through the Museum of Civilization's online Artifact Catalogue.

Engraving from SILA website

Both the sinew and the sealskin worked well.  I worked both lashing materials while they were wet and as they dried they shrunk and solidified, creating very tight, secure bonds.  The darker handles are tamarack wood and the lighter coloured handles are whalebone.  Many of the ulu handles that I've seen in collections from Labrador are made from wood, but, understandably, the farther north you go, the more common whalebone handles become.  Aside from the greasy, fish and mammal smell that whalebone gives off when you work it, I really like using the material.  Its a little softer than wood, it works easily when wet, and it doesn't have a grain to it like wood, so cuts don't have a tendency to get away on you.

Slate, tamarack, sinew $150 CDN Tax inc.

Slate, Tamarack, Hide Glue SOLD

Slate, Whalebone, Sealskin $170 CDN Tax inc.

Slate, Tamarack, Hide Glue $115 CDN Tax inc

Slate, Whalebone, Sinew $170 CDN Tax inc

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Bow Strings and Cables

If you bend a bow too far and the angle that the string meets the tip of the bow exceeds 90 degrees, then the string is likely to slide off and the bow will fly forward until it hits something, like a solid oak chair or your dining room wall (photo). For that reason, the Tuktut Nogait bow has a maximum draw of 24 inches. If the bow is drawn farther than that,

then the string slides off the end.
Its possible to make nocks that will hold a string on so that the string angle can exceed 90 degrees, and there are bows made in the Arctic with flaring or T-shaped nocks that were probably designed for just that purpose, but the Tuktut Nogait bow didn't appear to have that style of string nock.

For the bow string, I made a 2 ply cord of twisted sinew. The sinew fibres are separated into very fine silky threads that are twisted together while wet into a thread that is about 1/8th of an inch thick. This thread is made a little over twice as long as the finished string needs to be. I let that thread dry over night and then looped it in the middle and twisted it into a simple two ply cord. While that was drying I twisted the two ends together to create a second loop at the opposite end of the cord and let it dry under tension.

The end result is a continuous loop of sinew thread which has been twisted into a cord. As it dries it shrinks and everything sticks to itself. I didn't cut any loose threads off, instead I smoothed down any loose ends with warm water and hide glue. The final length of the bow string can be adjusted by twisting or untwisting it, although it can never be untwisted completely.

To add tension to the cord backing of the bow a sinew twister is used. The antler sinew twister is slid through the middle of the cord bundle and used as a wrench to twist the cord into a cable. To hold tension in the cable, I tied a leather lashing through the middle of the cable around the handle of the bow before removing the sinew twister. While the bow is strung, I can put two full twists in the cable, however, if I unstring the bow I can twist the cable three times.

The sinew twister is also handy to use when twisting the bow string and you can slide the string right off the twister onto the bow just like slipping on a shoe with a shoe horn. The tension in the bow string and the tension in the cable backing make a big difference in the performance of the bow.

I shot the bow with some store bought arrows yesterday. The first attempts were with the sinew cord untwisted and the bow string just tight enough to brace the bow (bracing the bow means stringing it so that the wood is flexed and it has the classic D-shaped profile). The arrows were travelling about 50 paces. I unstrung the bow and added a half dozen twists to the bowstring to make it shorter and added a couple full rotations of tension to the cable. With those two little changes the bow started shooting arrows 85 paces.

Tuktut Nogait Bow

from top; the original Inuvialuit artifact, with the Parks Canada reproduction sitting behind it.

The unstrung bow with the cable backing on (Western Yew, 50 inches, 127 cm long).

The braced bow.

The bow at full draw - 24 inches.

The effects of the cable backing are shown in the graph below. This time I was testing the draw weight of the bow by drawing the bow using a fish scale, and recording how many pounds were needed to pull it to 12 inches, 14 inches, 16 inches, etc. The red line shows the draw weight of the bow with no twist in the cable and the green line shows the draw weight of the bow with two twists in the cable. In both tests the tension in the bow string was the same. Without twists in the cable the draw weight of the bow at 24 inches is 28 pounds, with two twists in the cable the draw weight of the bow at 24 inches is 32 pounds - a 14% increase. The 3 twist test was done this morning, so the tension in the bow string might be different, but the results are consistent with the first two tests, this time it draws 34 pounds at 24 inches - a 21% increase. At the moment, 3 twists is pretty much the maximum tension that I can get in the cable.

Its a fun bow to play with because it has so many little ways to adjust it. I'll need to make some reproduction arrows to experiment with. Partly for authenticity and partly because the sinew bow string is thicker than commercial bow string and the little plastic nocks on the store bought arrows don't fit on it properly, so they break a lot.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: The bow string at 90 degree angle to the limb - any farther and the string slips off.
Second: Holes in the wall and a dent in the chair from the bow flying across the room when the string slipped off.
Third: 2 ply sinew bowstring loop
Fourth: drying the twisted sinew bow string with tension
Fifth: Sinew twister in the braided sinew cable
Sixth: Tying down the cable using leather lashing
Seventh: Composite photo of the Elfshot reproductions and the original Tuktut Nogait bow
Eighth: Graph showing the effect of cable tension on bow draw weight
Ninth: Wrapping the sinew backing. 70 feet of braided sinew was used.

A Dress Rehearsal for the Tuktut Nogait Bow

The Tuktut Nogait bow is very nearly finished. I had all day Thursday to work on it and made some good progress and a mistake or two. I cut the notches, put the recurve in the limbs, started the sinew bow string, did more tillering and tried a test wrap of the sinew cable.

The hardest part was bending the limbs. I soaked the areas that I want to bend with water and then used a blowtorch to heat them. That's how I bent the limbs on the non-functional version of the bow that I made last fall and it worked great. It worked nicely on one limb this time, but on the other limb there was a swell in the grain and the point that needed to bend was thicker than the wood on either side of it. When I bent it, tension cracks formed on the belly of the bow. They ran flat and followed along two growth rings, so I ground down the excess wood below the depth of the crack and I think everything will be alright. The original bow that I'm copying was in two pieces and the splice in the limb is exactly where this crack happened. I keep telling myself that if a working bow can be made in two pieces like that one was, then this little crack is something my bow can recover from. However, when I filed through the cracked wood to get to the solid wood underneath I rapidly thinned the limb at that point and the tiller was thrown way off. Its still noticeable at the end of the day, but there were times when it was really horrible to look at.

In the photo of the bow in the tiller, the limb where the crack happened is the one on the left. When its drawn, the recurve almost vanishes, whereas the recurve is still visible in the opposite limb. Its a tough sort of discrepancy to fix, but hopefully I can get things looking more symmetrical today. For the bow people out there, it currently draws 22 pounds at 18 inches, with the untwisted cable backing on.

I wrapped the braided sinew cable around the bow to try to figure out a good pattern and sequence of wrapping. In the version shown in the pictures I used about 69 feet of cord, with a couple feet left over, but I think I know how to use up those two feet the next time I wrap it. I started with 30 tight wraps around the elbow in the limb that gave me the problems and then ran a line along the back of the bow to the opposite elbow and did 30 tight loops there. If this bow was made in separate pieces, then these lashings would be important to bind together the spliced joins. From the second elbow I ran the cord to the nearest end nock and stretched six long strands back and forth to the opposite end. After that, I ran 8 cords from elbow to elbow, securing them with half-hitches, so that the cable in the two thirds of the bow has a total of 15 strands (8 running from elbow to elbow, 6 running from end to end, and 1 that runs from the first set of elbow lashings to the second set). I wrapped the final bit of cord around the 15 strand cable in the middle of the bow.

I studied a lot of reference photos and drawings to come up with this pattern and it accomplishes a few things that show up in ethnographic and archaeological bows.

1. The splices on the elbows of the bow are lashed first and separately. Sometimes this is a different material.
2. Some strands run end-to-end through the nocks.
3. The cable bundle in the middle is noticeably thicker than the cable towards the ends of the limbs. More strands run through the middle two thirds of the bow than along its entire length.
4. The cable bundle is wrapped in a spiral pattern. Again, sometimes this is a different material.
   

I was surprised to see how much of the belly of the bow is still exposed using this sequence of binding. Granted, some of the crucial thinning that I need to do on my bow is under the lashings, but there is also a lot of tillering that can be done with the cables on. I also didn't expect to be able to fit the bow string on over top of the cords through the nock. It seemed like all the space in the nock was used by the sinew cord, but it wasn't.

The green tillering string fit on without any problem. I'm not quite sure how to proceed, the nocks seem like a good match for the nocks on the artifact at this point, but there is so much force being stored in the bow now that for safety and comfort, I'm tempted to carve them a little deeper and give the bow string a little more wood to grab. Although it certainly looks secure in the photos.

I have a bit more tillering to do and a sinew bow string to finish, but once that's done, the bow should be ready for final assembly. I haven't twisted any tension into the cable yet, but just tying it down to the bow makes things pretty tight. I'll explain how a sinew twister is used to tighten the cable in a future post.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: The bow with a trial wrapping of braided sinew cord in the tiller
Second: Successfully putting the recurve in a limb
Third: Failing to put the recurve in a limb - these are the cracks I had to fix
Fourth: The cabled bow in the tiller drawn to 16 inches
Fifth: The unstrung bow with the cable backing described in the text
Sixth: Detail of the limb - you can see the initial wrapping around the elbow, the six long cables, the bundle of shorter cables tied from elbow to elbow and the wrapping of the 15 strand bundle in the centre of the bow.
Seventh: The green tiller string fits on the nock with 3 loops of braided cord underneath.

A Monday Morning That Feels Like a Monday Morning

I wound up working a few hours each day on the weekend. I normally try to enforce some time off on the weekend, but I spent days dealing with some really annoying malware and spyware infecting my computer during the end of last week. I finally got rid of the last of it on Saturday morning, but from Wednesday to Saturday, I lost a lot of productive time and felt like I needed to get back into the workshop.

On Saturday night, Lori and I went out to see the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra at the Arts and Culture Centre. It was a Christmas gift and my first time seeing an orchestra perform. It was pretty cool being able to see every note being played.

As far as work goes, I've got lots of little projects on the go. I have a few pieces of chert and caribou bone jewelry to finish. The sinew arrived over the weekend, so I can finish braiding my 70 foot line for the Tuktut Nogait bow backing. I've started tillering the bow this weekend. Tillering is the process of slowly removing wood from the belly of the bow and starting to bend the limbs. There are lots of little knots in the limbs that are slowing things down. It shouldn't be too bad when the cord backing is on - that will take a lot of strain off the wood, but for now I'm taking things really easy. Most of the work at this point is being done with files and cabinet scrapers.

I'm really keen to finish the bow, but I think I'd be better off getting the jewelry order finished up today. I've got a Craft Council meeting this week and a flintknapping demo at The Rooms to prepare for and I could really use a bit more space in my head to keep track of everything. I need to finish something today to make room for the new stuff. Oh yeah, we're also waiting for Staples to deliver a printer. We waited all day Friday for them to show up and they never did. Alledgedly, they'll be here sometime between 9-5 today to deliver it. Great. Trapped in the house waiting for the door. We get to start the week the same way we ended last week. If this post seemed rambling and without a point and gave you a little headache reading it, then that's because that's how my Monday morning feels.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: Bone pins and Dorset Endblades that need finishing
Second: box of neatly packaged sinew
Third: The bow and 60 feet of braided sinew
Fourth: Files and Cabinet scrapers used for shaving down the belly of the bow
Fifth: The Tuktut Nogait bow grip at the moment

Sinew and Ergonomic Stone Tools

Here's a look at the completed sinew bound Palaeoeskimo tools. There are so many interesting little quirks in these tools' design and manufacture that I'm just going to talk about the 4 tools that were hafted with sinew and leave the 5 baleen wrapped reproductions for next time.

The new piece for me in this set is the stubby handled side scraper based on a 3900-3100 year old Saqqaq side scraper found at Qeqertasussuk in Greenland. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the handle from the drawings (last post), it kind of looks like the tools would be hafted crooked. The side scraper hafts I've made in the past look like scalpels and everything is in a straight line. If the reference drawings of the original artifact weren't so thorough I might have convinced myself that I'd assembled it wrong. But when its all fit together and you hold it - wow - its the perfect little scraping and carving tool. If Lee Valley ever starts selling stone tools, this would be the first in the catalog. When you grasp the tool to use it, the handle just disappears into your hand.

There are lots of Palaeoeskimo handles that I've thought of as "functional", "expedient", "symbolic", or "clever" but this is the first one that I'd describe as "ergonomic". Leave it to the Palaeoeskimos living in Scandinavia to come up with it. Side scrapers are such handy little tools, too. Prehistorically, this would have been the primary tool used to form all these wooden handles. Palaeoeskimo side scrapers are prefectly designed for scraping and shaping hard organic materials, like wood, antler or whalebone. Its kind of a crooked knife, cabinet scraper, small gouge and plane all in one.

To bind the stone tools to the handles I used sinew and hide glue. I tend to use Knox gelatine for hide glue, although I go through enough of it now that I've started getting bigger bags of the stuff from Lee Valley. Knox comes in handy individual use sized pouches. I dissolve one 7 gram pouch in about 80 ml of warm water. When you first mix it there tends to be air bubbles in the mixture, so I let it set for an hour or so, then microwave it for 12 seconds and slowly stir it again. If the bubbles are gone, then its ready to use. If the bubbles are still there I continue to let it set and reheat until they are gone. If you don't get rid of the bubbles the glue will dry frothy with the bubbles and holes still intact.

I described in an earlier post how to process sinew from a dried tendon to usable string. I've braided all my long sinew, but I still have a lot of shorter 6 inch lengths that are ideal for this sort of hafting. I pull apart the amount I need and chew it until it softens. You can soak it in warm water if you don't like holding sinew in our cheek for 10 or 15 minutes. I'm not sure why I don't use a little cup of warm water. To be honest, I think its because fishing around in the water for the wormy little wet sinews is kind of gross and once you suppress the gag reflex, it really doesn't taste that bad.

To set the blade In the handle I dip the hafting area of the stone in the runny hide glue (microwave the glue for 12 seconds on high if it has set and you need to make it liquid again) and press it into the handle. Then wrap the sinew tightly around the join. The sinew shrinks to about half its size as it dries so you don't need to wrap it too tightly and more sinew is better than not enough. The best part is it sticks to itself and there's no need for knots. Just smooth it down on itself and it will hold. If you need to add more sinew, just keep wrapping threads until you have enough.

If you are working from an artifact as reference, the width of the hafting area on the handle or the notches on the tool will give you an indication of how much binding material you'll need to add. You can tell the hafting area on a stone tool because it will be ground down a bit. A knapped edge is sharp enough to cut through sinew as it dries, so you need to abrade your hafting area.

It'll take several hours to set. I usually leave it overnight to dry and then put on a coat of hide glue over the dried thread the next day to seal everything in. Loose threads can be pressed into the new glue to hold them in place and if there are really unruly threads you can trim them off with nail clippers. Store unused glue in the freezer and microwave it when you need it again.

Pros, Hafting with Sinew:

• Simple to use. No knots necessary.
• Works perfectly with hide glue, cleans up with warm water.
• Shrinks as it dries to form tighter bond.

Cons, Hafting with Sinew:

• Water soluble. If you use your tool in a wet environment, then your lashings will dissolve. (Idea for a future experiment: its not really a Palaeoeskimo solution, but I think that one function of red ochre on Beothuk tools would be to help waterproof rawhide or sinew lashings.)

Here's the finished Palaeoeskimo reproductions. The stubby handled side scraper is based on Saqqaq artifacts and the scalpel hafted side scraper is more Groswater Palaeoeskimo. The Knife is a Groswater Palaeoeskimo Asymmetric knife hafted in an Avayalik Island inspired handle. The end scraper is a triangular endscraper that shows up at many different times in Palaeoeskimo collections.

Back to Front:
Saqqaq Palaeoeskimo Side Scraper (Spruce, Chert, Sinew, Hide Glue): $113 Cdn (tax inc.)

Groswater Palaeoeskimo Side Scraper (Spruce, Chert, Sinew, Hide Glue): $85 Cdn (tax inc.)

Groswater Palaeoeskimo Asymmetric Knife (Alder, Chert, Sinew, Hide Glue): $113 Cdn (tax inc.)

Palaeoeskimo Scraper (Spruce, Chert, Sinew, Hide Glue): $113 Cdn (tax inc.)

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First, Palaeoeskimo reproductions hafted with sinew and hide glue
Second, Saqqaq style side scraper. My thumb and forefinger are pinched together in the working postion.
Third, The handle fits perfectly when I close my hand.
Fourth, Ready to haft - that's a big bag of sinew above the tools.
Fifth, Dried sinew ready to chew.
Sixth, dipping the hafting area of a scraper in hide glue before inserting into the wood handle
Seventh, wrapping the sinew into the groove of a Groswater Asymmetric knife (I usually use two hands, but someone had to hold the camera)
Eighth, The hafting area of the end scraper is bound by sinew
Ninth, Ready to go!
Tenth, The finished tools

Thinking Out Loud about Sinew and Workshops

This week has been kind of all over the place, while I've been slowly getting back to work and organizing myself and my workspace for the coming year. I managed to braid a 60 foot line of sinew before I ran out of material. I still have short pieces of sinew that I can use on small hafting projects, but I need a little bit more before I can get to my 70 foot goal. I'm not really sure where all 70 feet will be used, but if that's what people say to use, then that's what I'll use. I don't want to be the guy who backs his bow with 60 feet of sinew when everyone else uses 70 feet. Nobody wants to be that guy.

So, I've ordered some more materials. I need to restock my sinew. For the most part I use 3RiversArchery.Com, a traditional archery supplier for sinew and similar resources. I put in an order for rock and fibre optic glass with Neolithics as well. I'm still planning to offer some flintknapping workshops in St. John's in the coming weeks - a basic "beer bottle to arrowheads" pressure flaking class and also an "introduction to percussion" workshop, where people will work with hammerstones and antler billets. I'll need the Obsidian and English Flint that I have on order for the percussion workshop, so I can't really set the dates until it arrives. But hopefully things will work out for the 2nd or 3rd week of February.

I do have one demonstration date that I can share - February 21st at The Rooms, 2-4 PM. I'll be working Ramah Chert and demonstrating how stone tools were made - bring the kids!

Things are also in the plans for a workshop in Calgary at the beginning of March. I'll post more details on that when, and if, things get firmed up.

Photo Credits:
Top, Middle: Tim Rast
Bottom: Patty Wells

Photo Captions:
Top: 60 Feet of braided sinew.
Middle: Ramah Chert Flake Scatter
Bottom: Scraping with a stone scraper