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Stone-age bow without stone

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Kegan:
Okay, so I don't have any flint-like rocks around here. But I do have various grits of sandstone, and I might be able to get an antler tine off my brother for splitting. So now's the task- build a servicable bow (and maybe some arrows) with just what I have around here. And yes, this is inspired by Jamie's cedar bow :).

Any thoughts, advice, or such before I have at it :)?

jamie:
make an antler chisel. you can use it to pry off pieces of wood. where are you located kegan? there has to be some kind of rock. even broken bottles work. peace

mitchman:
he lives near me and trust me there is no rock workable around here to my knolledge. the only stuff i use is from a rock shop(and at 4 bucks a pound). this can be an expensive hobby, >:( :(

jamie:
no quartz or granite?

Kegan:
Nope, none. Lots and lots and lots of sandstone though, and some slate a mile or two from here. But it doesn't really matter, I got it working (kinda :)). I felled a nice straight sassafras, under the logic that the softer wood would be easier to work. Not so. I kinda over looked how sassafras hates to split, and with the green wood, that's all I had to reduce lots of wood. But it worked. Weekened the base by putting the little antler tine through the tree all around, then climbing straight up the tree and pullin' her down. I split it all to heck, as it refused to follow any kind of sensical splitting. But I finally got a piece. Scraped the bark and brought it to rough width. It's raining too much to light a fire, but next weekend I'll use a hand drill fire to scorch some of the excess wood and rasp it off with some stones. So far she's 76"? long and around two fingers wide (1 1/2"). Tough work, and next time I'll use some sorta cutting edge, a smaller tree, and something that WANTS to be a bow ;D.

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