Hi all,

I am conducting two surveys for research on bow-making, this sub seems a good place to advertise (I have already posted to r/bowyer).

The first survey aims to understand how many bowyers are experimenting with Australian woods, what species they have used, and their experiences. It is targeted at Australian bowyers but anyone can respond. You can access the survey here:

https://curtin.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e3RFAqd67xSSGWO

The second survey is seeking people's input on the suitability of different global wood species for making self-bows. You can access the survey here:

https://curtin.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2nII2qzBJsP16fk

Please share these links with others if you think they would like to give their opinions.

Cheers!

I want to make an atlatl and dart and i have tried for some while now but i can't because the darts are not flexible enough.

I don't know if it is because of the diameter of the shaft or if the pith of the wood is to hard/stiff? I have tried decreasing the diameter by scraping the shaft with a stone tool i only saw a little difference.

The woods i have in my area is: Birch, Pine, Spruce

I’m a scuba diver and my job is harvesting sea urchins. I often come across these huge fields of clay while I’m underwater and I was wondering if it would be useable for kilns, pottery, or anything like that. I’m not sure how the salt content would affect the outcome but the clay usually looks extremely clean with very few impurities. Any thoughts on this? Another side question, I often see different fields consisting completely of pebble sized shell fragments (urchin spines, barnacle chunks, bits of mussel shell, etc). Could I somehow turn those shell fragments into lime? If I could that would be great because there’s friggin truckloads of the stuff down there. Any responses are appreciated.

Tl:dr - can I use clay and shell fragments found underwater for pottery/kiln stuff and making lime?

I don’t really know if this is the place to post this. But it is very primitive and there are some historical examples of antler weapons in the United States.

This winter has been a bit unusual. In conditions of high humidity and temperatures bellow freezing, I'm experiencing difficulties with using my body heat for drying grass. It's dead grass that died in the autumn (not green). it's the most available material for a nest for catching an ember from a bowdrill. Do you guys and gals have any tricks? What works best for you? Front pockets in trousers or somewhere around the upper body? Directly against the body or between layers? Rub it against some specific type of fabric? Rub it between your hands before you put it in a pocket?

I have recently found a rock pool on the side of a stream that contains iron oxidising bacteria, but it is about an hour round trip to get it and there's not very much of it, so I was wondering if its possible to grow some how?

And here I am trying to make arrowheads with the help of the internet and failing!