My son's bow drill

[Cannonman17]

Here was one of my Chirstmas presants from my son - and an interesting one at that. It's a bow drill, now of course this one obviously has a modern touch with it's twine rope and metal tip BUT it does work on the same principal. I thought it was pretty cool and wanted to share. We have tested it out a bit and it will, with patience, drill through wood but we plan on making the spinning disk out of stone (counter weight) out of stone and then see how it does. I thought this would be a good forum for this when we look at some of the drilled artifact that sometimes come by- there's a good chance a similar tool to this might have been used to create them.

[creekhunter]

NEAT!

[unitas]

Wouldn't be hard to break a sweat using that.It would be interesting to see how much better it would work with that stone counter weight.

[Gypsy Heart]

Very nice present....Your son evidently knows just the type of gift that makes dad proud!

[Cannonman17]

Very nice present....Your son evidently knows just the type of gift that makes dad proud!

Isn't that the truth? I'm looking forward to putting it to good use on some of my projects now- I always tell people how I carve my pipes using almost all traditional methods and next time I make one I'm going to put the dremmel back on the shelf and go for the bow drill...

[Neanderthal]

Paul, I have made a few pump drills like that one and they are cool as hell! It's amazing how well they can work. It bothers me when people stereotype the aboriginals as 'ignorant savages', they were anything but. Atlatl is another one, the mechanics of them are astounding when you think of it. From the quickly replaceable foreshaft to the physics of the lever, it was the ultimate repeating spear. Single sided beveling was another breakthrough..something that we should utilize more effectively today. Simply, Native Americans were pretty darned intelligent.

[Cannonman17]

Hey- that's funny you mention the atlatl, I couldn't agree more. My son and I were actually out in the shool yard just last night launching ours all over, what a blast. My kid is having a hard time getting the hang of it and has a lot of miss fires but I think he enjoys it. He really seems to enjoy making the darts themselves. My buddy lives a block and a half away and late at night with a practice tip we wanted to see how many throws it would take to get from his house back to mine... 5. But that was counting two miss throws on my part so really it was closer to three.. not bad.

[stryker-one]

Cannon, you are a good Dad. That young hero is really going to learn a lot before he even realizes he is being schooled.

Good on ya.

Stryker