Thread: Making an Aputu
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Old 5th May 2013, 10:26 AM   #12
Tim Simmons
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: What is still UK
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That is a good basic block club. You could take it further? Many old block clubs have beautifully incised decoration and appear lovingly polished.

Your thread is a great opportunity to explore carving without metal tools. Metal tools have the advantage of being more easily formed into practical working shapes to start with. The edge of a metal tool in many cases may be no sharper than a flint tool but the edge can take more abuse and be so quickly resharpened. Metal tools of the right type cut deeper and allow much faster work. I think the main difference between metal v stone, shell and other "primitive" tools is that metal tools enable anybody to use them with good affect in quick time. The economics to tool manufacture v the availability of trade industrial metal tools must of had huge appeal. But to my mind an artist/skilled crafts worker will achieve the same results what ever there tools are made of. Another factor to why we see such wonderful work done without metal tools is that the makers where used to using then and knew no other way. They would have had a tool kit with portable sharpening stone like any good worker today. Even small objects must have taken much time to finish and nothing came from a store respect . All these pictures are PNG but illustrate primitive carving tools. From "Decorative Art Of New Guinea, Incised Designs, Field Museum Of Natural History, Chicago 1925". My pictures show just 1 minutes work with a stone adze on some firewood and a few fine objects carved without metal.
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