Making an Aputu

[colin henshaw]

Well done, it looks a good job.....

[Tim Simmons]

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.

[KuKulzA28]

Good points Tim. Using stone and bone tools is more time consuming because the tool edges tend to be less durable or less sharp (depends if stone or bone or ?) but if the surviving examples of "stone age" technology tell us anything... the weapons were often well-made and cared for just as many weaponry in the metal using world back in the day.

I may polish this one down better. I would love to try my hand at carving the more elaborate designs but the pictures featuring those aren't big enough for me to really capture the detail. Maybe I carve something like this? http://anthro.amnh.org/anthropology/...40.0%2F%206339

anyways, got myself a big chunk of old black palm. Making a YANOMAMÖ club. The one on top http://anthro.amnh.org/anthropology/...%2E1%2F%202760 . If you guys don't mind I think I'll just post it here as well, I don't want to clutter EAA Forums with lots of "wood carving to make Amerindian clubs" threads since it doesn't seem to be the focus of the forum.

When I find another suitable wood, I think I am going to make another Aputu, this time a thinner handle and more concave faces and sharper edges on top. Maybe I'll even do it all with stone and bone tools someday... but my flint knapping skills are just very basic, and I'd have to find/hunt some bones first...

[VANDOO]

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ighlight=aputu

HERE IS A LINK TO A OLD POST ON THESE THAT WOULD ADD INFORMATION TO THIS POST AND GIVE YOU SOME IDEAS ON SIMPLE DESIGNS. I HOPE THE LINK WORKS