I am currently involved with a very exciting woodworking project which I will post lots about in due course but there is a press embargo until March the 6th. For now I can tell you that I have been having fun experimenting with bronze tools.
I have used bronze tools a little in the past but only felled an odd tree which doesn’t give you much idea of how well they work. The folk who used these tools no doubt used them for many thousands of hours and really knew how to get the best out of them. It’s not possible to form much of a judgment as to how well they work without at least putting in a few hundred hours.
There are lots of potential variables to play with from edge angles and sharpening profiles to hafting techniques and angles and finally variables in the way they are used. I started out with some bronze pallstaves straight from the foundry, they come looking like this. Pallstaves can be mounted as adzes or axes and are the standard form through most of the second millennium BC before socketed axes came in. This was cast from an original and as you can see it is pretty blunt.
Here are some original pallstaves in a museum to show the variation.
The first stage in preparation of the blade is peening or hammering it out toward an edge, I didn’t photograph this stage but I did it with a small steel hammer, presumably in the bronze age it would have been done with nice smooth rounded river boulders. I was surprised how soft the bronze felt compared even to hot steel and did not think it boded well for a working tool. The bronze apparently work hardens a little with hammering but my rockwell files suggested it was still below 40 r which is incredibly soft for an edge tool. Anyway after peening I ground and polished the edge, now they would shave arm hair or slice paper easily.
Next I set about hafting them, First I researched on the web to find images of as many early axes as I could, I knew Oetzi’s axe well but found just a few more. Here they are
Here is an index for all blog posts on the Dover boat project
bronze-age-woodworking-adzes-and-axes
more-bronze-age-woodworking
bronze-age-boat-building-pictures
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-2
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-3
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-4
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-5
bronze-age-woodworking-tools-early thoughts
building-bronze-age-dover-boat-part-6
building-bronze-age-dover-boat-part-7
boat-building-steaming-timbers
filming-with-time-team
more-bronze-age-boatbuilding.
casting-bronze-axes-and-adzes
more-bronze-age-boatbuilding.
20-hour-woodworking-marathon
woodworking-marathon-continued-just 18 hours to go.
dover-boat-launch-day-end-of-3-months work.
the boat-that-didnt-float.
bronze age boat in medieval castle
I'm sure they'd work, but they certainly look awkward!
sweet, i've only made some of steel, can't wait for more on the project.
I too have wondered about working with bronze tools, ever since learning about Oetzi the Iceman. Your axes and adzes look great so far. Please keep us updated!
Very interesting project. What kind of wood is the handle?
The design looks a lot like the adze on my ice axe I use to traverse glaciers with in the Cascade Mountains. I wonder if it is possible to self arrest with a copy of this relic.
Well a couple of weeks in and much to my surprise I am absolutely in love with my bronze tools. They work in a very different way to steel tools, they have a lot of similarities to the adzes I used in Japan last year but differences too. They follow the fibres of the wood much more than steel effectively peeling multiple small strips of wood away. Hard to describe. In due course hope to put up a bit of vid and photos which will explain.
intresting stuff robin,do you think that our ancestors just got on with using them and replaced regularly or do you think they were well looked after?
I don,t see any reason for them to deteriorate any more than steel tools, considering the investment of time and energy in creating them I suspect they were looked after.
Rob I have made handles of several woods, cherry, yew, ash. Finding the right angle of crook is important any good fibrous wood will work.
As an archaeologist, I'm following this with interest. I had always assumed that the bronze tools were effective, but ultimately neither hardwearing nor long-lived, and that were often more for display than any practical purpose.