Birch Darts and Duck Feathers

Until they are done I'm going
to keep them bundled together
 so they aren't tempted to bend.

 I spent the better part of the day working on the birch dart shafts.  The split birch was fairly straight, with even grain and hardly any knots.  I've tried to match the dimensions of the ice patch darts as closely as possible and the resulting shafts seem strong with a nice whip to them.  Currently the shafts are about 2 metres long, but I'll most likely trim them down to 150-180 cm.  Two of them will have detachable foreshafts and one will be all one piece.  I have an extra shaft on the go in case something goes wrong with the three that I need for the order.  If all of the darts survive, I should have an extra one for my own collection.

The dart staying in Canada
gets duck feathers.  The ones
crossing international boundaries
are getting ptarmigan.

The proximal end of the darts is very narrow - about 7mm wide and they taper gradually for a little less than a metre and then they have a more-or-less constant diameter around 1.3 - 1.5cm.  This makes a very flexible dart with a good bit of weight towards the distal end.  Combined with a largish stone projectile point and ptarmigan or duck feathers for fletching these should be very efficient projectiles.  The three I'm making are for display and teaching purposes, but it would sure be fun to try playing with these.  If anyone has tried throwing these darts, I'd love to hear from you.

I removed another couple of
millimetres in diameter after this
photo was taken.  These darts
a lot of spring to them.

I've taken some liberties with the process.  I harvested and split the birch trunk by hand and I've been working the shafts with hand tools, but they've had metal blades and I've used an electric disc sander for a lot of the shaping.  If I was making these entirely with a stone and bone tool kit, I think I would have kept splitting the wood to get smaller and smaller diameter splits until I had something close to the right diameter for the dart shafts.  The final shaping could be done with a stone scraper or flake.  It seems like the birch would be fairly cooperative with this type or reduction.  It can be little stringy if you aren't careful with the splitting, but the grain is nice and straight and the resulting staves should also be nice and straight.   The bends in the wood are pretty minor and I used a heat gun to straighten the wood several times as I worked it down.  So far it seems to be taking the new shape well enough.  I don't anticipate any bending problems.

These ducks don't migrate and they
obviously don't need these feathers
anymore, so I'm taking them.
Thanks ducks.

For references on the dart shafts and feathers, I've relied on Yukon ice patch finds.  There are lots of good references, but these two have been especially useful:

ARCTIC VOL. 65, SUPPL. 1 (2012) P. 118–135 The Archaeology of Yukon Ice Patches: New Artifacts, Observations, and Insights P. GREGORY HARE, CHRISTIAN D. THOMAS, TIMOTHY N. TOPPER, and RUTH M. GOTTHARDT

ARCTICVOL. 58, NO. 1 (MARCH 2005) P. 38–43 Identification of Ancient Feather Fragments Found in Melting Alpine Ice Patches in Southern YukonCARLA J. DOVE, P. GREGORY HARE, and MARCY HEACKER 

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Ptarmigan Feathers

I need a few ptarmigan feathers for a set of atlatl darts.  A friend from Labrador managed to find a half dozen wings in his freezer and popped them in the mail for me last week.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Copper Inuit Arrow Reproductions Almost Done

Copper arrowheads and
antler foreshafts

 The Copper Inuit Arrow reproductions are almost complete.  I blame the snow for them not being finished today.  If I didn't have to shovel, I think I could have got them done this afternoon.  They are very close, but I'm not going to show them assembled until everything is done.

Close, but I need to trim and add a bit
 more sinew at the bottom of each feather.

The main tasks left at the start of the day were riveting the arrowheads onto the foreshafts, tying the feathers on to the main shafts and some final sanding, filing and antiquing.  Right now the ptarmigan feathers are all tied on with sinew, but there is a little bit of trimming left to do on the ends of the feathers and possibly the feathers themselves.  The fletching that I've seen on Copper Inuit arrows tends to be long and very narrow.  There are only two feathers on each arrow and they are tied at each end without being glued down the spine.

The thin copper rod is just the right
diameter  to fill the hole in the antler
foreshaft and copper arrowhead.

The riveting went alright. I used thin copper rods for the rivets that I cold hammered out of heavy copper ground wire.  I find that I need to switch between hammering and filing the rivets frequently.  The antler is easy to crack and will split if you just try to hammer the copper ends flat.

The finished rivet is hammered and ground
flush with the antler.  A bit of red wine
vinegar and miracle grow will help antique the
copper overnight.

It takes very light tapping and frequent pauses and grinding to keep the rivet head mushrooming out without creating a lot of internal pressure on the antler.  I broke the first one that I tried this afternoon because I was too impatient and tried to hammer without enough breaks to check and file the copper heads.  Eventually they all got done and I'm happy with them.  The bond on all six of the new arrowheads is nice and secure.

Whalebone blunts on antler foreshafts.
They've been glued in to place, but
I'll add a sinew or gut wrapping to
secure them before I try using them.

I also took a bit of time today to work on the blunts for small game.  I used the bird blunt from the Ivavvik National Park collection that I worked on a few years back as my inspiration.  I made mine from whalebone and am hafting them on to antler foreshafts so that they will be interchangeable with the copper tipped foreshafts.  In demos I like to mention that interchangeable foreshafts could alter the function of a projectile to suit the specific game that the hunter wanted to pursue and now I'll have an example of that to show people.  I guess the next thing I should make are some fish arrow attachments.

The mainshafts have a sinew reinforced
socket on the distal end that fit the
end of the foreshafts.  You can change the
foreshafts and if one part of your arrow
is broke or lost, you don't have to start
again from scratch.

Anyhow, I should qualify this composite blunt foreshaft design by saying that I haven't actually seen it in archaeological or ethnographic collections.  The bird blunts that I've seen are either attached directly to the main shaft or have been carved in one piece at the end of the wood arrow or as a single piece foreshaft.  I haven't found an example of a two part blunt foreshaft like this, so take it with a grain of salt. I suspect they exist, and I just can't find an example, but who knows, maybe there is some functional or ideological reason that blunts are not made this way that I'm not aware of, yet.

Regardless of the length or details of the design, all of the foreshafts have the same conical base so they will all be interchangeable on the wood mainshafts.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Starting arrows, finishing goggles

I've started working on a few arrows this week.  I have an order for a few Copper Inuit arrow reproductions and I'll probably work on a couple extra arrows for myself.  I need some blunts, if I'm going to try small game hunting with the Tuktut Nogait bow.  I finished up a couple pairs of spruce snow goggles last week as well and include the final photos here.

To fletch the arrows, I'll be using wing feathers from a ptarmigan (known locally as partridge).      Lee Gilbert over at A Whole Bunch of Ings found a wing for me in his freezer.  The feathers are nice and white, with just enough speckles on them to make them interesting.  I suspect I'll go through all of the flight feathers from this particular wing on th current batch of arrows, which means I should think about acquiring more.  Do you have a Ptarmigan in your freezer?

For the arrowheads, I've hammered some old copper pipe flat.  There's still a fair bit of drilling, sharpening, shaping, and antiquing to go into them, but they are starting to take shape.  For the rest of the arrows, I will use antler foreshafts and most likely pine for the main shaft.  There is a small copper rivet to hold the arrowhead in place and the two feathers will be tied on with sinew.  I'm using the same design as these Copper Inuit arrows that I reproduced a couple years back. 

Finally, here's the Wapusk goggles that I put in the mail for the client at the end of last week.  There's not much extra work done to them since I last showed the photos, except they have the braided artificial sinew headband added.

This pair is for me.  Its based on a pair of goggles that we found in 2010 on Baffin Island.  I braided real sinew for the  straps and, like the wapusk goggles above, I finished the wood with heavy burnishing with antler and ivory.  I had a small, broken ivory bird sitting on my desk that I used to polish the wood.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast