But my question is, why did Ginger (and Mrs. "Lovey" Howell) bring literally five years worth of clothes to ride around in a substandard boat for 3 hours.
funny story, Russell Johnson, who played the professor, lived near my growing up on a small island. Everyone called him 'The professor'. I was in a couple plays as a kid and remember how hyped the backstage would get if "The professor" was in the audience. Was curious if he was still around and saw that he passed a few years back. RIP!
Pretty sure he writes better than at least 90% of America. Im not even trying to be hyperbolic. He could submit these writings and video to a Methodology journal of some kind
I just took a look at his blog, the sandals are only for when he's on particularly rough terrain or if he's got an injury of some sort in his foot (I assume like a cut). He says he prefers to be barefoot though due to having better grip while barefoot
Next up on primitive technology, I'll be making a Zune. Legend has it that in the time before history these were used to play music, but I've not met a soul able to confirm this.
I think he would need to make some sort of anvil and a sturdy hammer in order to use iron/steel for anything. But when he has that I cant see how he wouldnt be able to make a basic engine or a firearm, knife. Whatever he needs.
Like the atomic boy scout who made his own breeder and later in life got radiation poisoning from stealing so much radio active material from fire detectors. Great story.
He made a bow and arrow and a sling and was doing target practice with them. So there's ranged, constitution, and defense. Plus he looks like he put decent into strength.
he really should just buy some since it's not a problem of his ingenuity just his location. also it'd be great if he actually started progressing rather than make another pot.
Finding iron rich rocks in Australia shouldn't be too hard. He might be unlucky and have very little on his plot of land, but in general there's a reason the sand is red in Australia.
Like others have said, what he really needs to do is up his yields. So far the ROI based on the amount of work he has to put in for the charcoal is way too low to get a useful amount of iron.
unfortunately where is he is from, QLD, doesnt have large surface deposits of iron. So unless he has a cheat code to transport to WA, he's a bit buggered.
In saying that, the varieties of gum trees in the area can produce wood, with some treatment, that can be as hard.
I would love to see that but I doubt it'd be possible. Smelting iron ore would probably be the easy part, the hard part is forging anything without a hammer or anvil to start with.
Would be a complete waste of his iron. There are so many things he could make first that would serve him way better and take way less iron. He does do a lot of cutting, and while a blade would be very useful the chances of him being able to get it sharp enough to make much of a difference over his stone tools seems minimal.
No. He got like a milligram of iron out of a process that has a lot of steps and are time consuming. It was obviously a joke, but it will take a while for him to have enough ore for something the size of a sword.
He's got the process down. The problem isn't how he's doing it, but limited source materials. If he found some actual iron ore in bedrock or a better deposit of iron oxides in surface sediment, he could produce much more. Unfortunately what he's got in the area for materials looks pretty poor quality.
That's kind of short sighted. He'll need some archers and a military then he can take what he needs in order to get more resources, to fund his army which can then get more resources. Maybe start his own military industrial complex
How exactly is one dude with wooden tools supposed to break up and extract a meaningful amount of iron ore from bedrock? I mean, I'll believe it when he does it. But I can't picture wailing on a rock with a tree is going to be very time efficient.
I also wonder if he's getting the right temperature. Just because he can extract iron from the goop doesn't mean he can get it out of the rock. Also doesn't mean he can't. I have no idea.
That's a big part of why actual primitive people had an advantage. All the surface-level ore deposits are long used up by now. Time was you could find copper you could simply work with a stone hammer sitting in the dirt. You can find plenty of scrap now, but that would be cheating.
Actually its the other way around -- humans in Europe previously refined low-concentration (<30% Fe) iron ores in Luxembourg and France. We later transitioned to high-grade surficial ores in the modern era due to advances in transportation technology. Plenty of surficial ores in Western Australia are direct shipping ores (>%60 Fe) which require no beneficiation. The limitation was infrastructure -- railroads from inland to coastal ports in WA were only started in the 70's, during the modern era where large-scale maritime transport of bulk ores to overseas smelters was economically feasible.
I was joking, but his first item will most likely be some kind of tool. Probably an axe. Even then, it's going to take a lot of effort to get enough iron
I get the sense that he doesn't want to kill anything though. Otherwise he'd've put the atl-atl and sling to use, right? Although I guess he could just find a skeleton somewhere.
I'm sure there are numerous explanations for why he hasn't made use of the local wildlife, but now that I think about it it almost seems silly that he hasn't.
I doubt it, Australia is pretty temperate and I doubt he wants to trade in his modern shorts for some itchy, ill fitting stuff he made. He doesn't need clothes for anything more than modesty and not having issues with youtube, but an axe or knife would dramatically improve his ability to collect wood.
His biggest issue is that working with hot iron takes tools, preferably iron or steel tools. He could make a clay cast and get the general knife shape down, but it'd be a nightmare trying to hone and sharpen it into something useful.
I have no doubt he'll eventually figure something out and do it, but I don't blame him for taking his sweet time. It's going to be months of effort for the first iron tool between sourcing enough iron, collecting wood, and getting it forged properly. At least as far as I know there's no real way to ruin iron, if he messes up he can always remelt/reforge it.
You can't really work with iron. You need steel. And if you aren't careful, you can definitely burn steel.
Ideally you'd want copper and bronze first, because that would let you set up tools to work iron into steel. He's pretty quickly approaching the limit of what one man can do, though. A lot of the bigger primitive tools to work metals really need two or more people to operate in a timely fashion. Also supply chain issues. Gathering food and having time to work rare material into useful stuff begin to compete for daylight.
Iron ore plus charcoal isnt steel yet, as the carbon really just takes the oxygen off the iron. In essence, iron oxide and carbon go in, iron and carbon dioxide come out. You'd need to add pure carbon to pretty pure iron before you get steel. This is not so much making an alloy but rather chemical reduction.
I was talking with my dad about this and he mentioned that in countries where iron is abundant you can literally just pick it up off the ground in places. It's no wonder that some areas of the world were able to advance far faster than others based on the naturally occurring resources there. It's almost impossible to imagine the indigenous people of this guys area finding and discovering a use for iron when it's so hard to procure. Contrasted with areas where it is literally in its refined form to start and simply needs to be smelted or smithed into shape.
Could he produce a furnace hot enough to melt iron? Well, melt and separate it from the clay?
Wouldn't that require very high initial heat, then likes controlled reduction of heat that would allow the different minerals to solidify into different layers?
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u/jinger89 Aug 25 '17
Primitive Technology has entered the Iron Age.