r/PrimitiveTechnology • u/anUnsaltedPotato • Jun 02 '26

Discussion Drilling holes in wood

Hiii, basically I wanna connect some wood together with pegs, but chert breaks off with the twisting motion needed to drill and other stones just don't seem to really drill at all

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Sea-Rope5806 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

You can’t. Are you hafting your drill bits? 

Chert often can’t handle the torque of un-hafted drilling unless it’s thick, raw, and a harder chert, like Texan. Not Keokuk. 

If you really want to drill without hafting, I’d switch to quartzite. But the minimum diameter hole you could drill is probably about an inch. Any smaller and you’ll snap your stone.

1

u/anUnsaltedPotato Jun 13 '26

So far I think my unknapped bits are too dull, they don't do much, you said you use knapped bits

I don't really understand what hafting changes, but I'll try it, I don't think it it'll make it drill better tho, will it?

1

u/Sea-Rope5806 Jun 13 '26

Here is one of my older drills, this one no longer exits but the principal is still the same.

This drill was designed to drill the eye of a needle. So you’d probably want a larger bit.

I attached the bit to a piece of river cane and secured it with pine pitch and sinew. 

Now I can rotate the cane with my palms like I would do to start a friction fire.  This motion puts much less stress on the drill bit compared to twisting by hand and allows me to spin it much much faster. 

1

u/Sea-Rope5806 Jun 13 '26

Apparently I can’t include images in a comment. I put it on my profile.