Drilling Holes In Wood The Primitive Way

Drilling holes in wood using primitive technology is an extremely important skill set to have when metal tools are not available. People have been drilling holes in wood for tens of thousands of years.

One ancient technique, which is effective, but very slow, is the burning technique. To drill a hole first you place hot coals on the wood where you want the hole to be located. The wood will heat up and with repeated addition of coals, will burrow a hole through any piece of wood. It is important to not let the wood completely catch on fire and burn a hole wider than you want.

One can wet the wood that you don't want to burn. Wet wood will not burn. Periodically you can also use other tools such as a stick or a screwdriver to chip out the charred wood to hasten the process. It is hard to drill pencil sized holes with this method, but it does work and only requires fire and a couple of sticks to pick up the coals. Oh, and patience.

Another method is to carve a small indention in the wood or even hit it with a rock or other hard object to dent the wood where the hole should be. Next put some sand in the indention and spin a stick on top of the sand as if you are trying to start a fire. The sand will wear away the wood eventually making a hole, with the keyword being eventually. Automating the spinning dowel rod even if it were to move slowly would be a great advancement, as it could do the work while you are attending other tasks.

The next step up is the simple use of a rock that has been flint knapped to form a point. You spin the sharpened rock and it eats away at the wood to form a hole. An improvement to this is to secure the stone point to a stick which will aid in spinning the point faster. A bow drill that is used to make fire can also be used to spin your drill to drill a hole. This is the easiest and fastest method listed here.

So why would you need to drill a hole? We don't often drill holes when building today's homes. True, but we use metal nails and screws to join wood together today. If you have no nails or screws a peg is another option. Drilling a hole through to timbers and then whittling a piece of wood so that it can be hammered in is much more secure and permanent than using lashing. And lashing often prevents a flush fit often required if you want to keep out bugs or hold in heat.

Wood isn't the only material that can be cut using the above methods. Objects as hard as stone can also be drilled. Obviously a stone will require harder drill material and more patience.

Trust me! You will soon find a need for this technology if you haven't thought of uses already.