Primitive Technology is back with another great video, where he takes his experiment in primitive building technology even further.
(If you missed the last one, check out how he builds a woodland home using only his bare hands and a sharp stone.)
In this new video he builds a tiled roof hut in the bush using only primitive tools and materials. Check out the video above, or the screens below for some highlights.
Getting the stone axe ready for work
The wooden frame was built with a 2X2m floor plan and a 2m tall ridge line with 1m tall side walls. 6 posts were put into the ground 0.25 m deep.
The 3 horizontal roof beams were attached to these using mortise and tenon joints carved with a stone chisel.
The rest of the frame was lashed together with lawyer cane strips. The frame swayed a little when pushed so later triangular bracing was added to stop this.
Also when the mud wall was built, it enveloped the posts and stopped them moving altogether.
Looks like the stone axe is working!
He built a small kiln made out of mud from the ground, with a perforated floor of clay from the creek bank.
Tiles were made from clay pressed into rectangular moulds made from strips of lawyer cane. 20 tiles were fired at a time.
All in all, he made 450 flat tiles and 15 curved ridge tiles. It took a total of 26 firings, with the average firing taking about 4 hours. The fired tiles were then hooked over the horizontal roof battens.
The wall was made of clayey mud and stone. A stone footing was laid down and over this a wall of mud was built. To save on mud, stones were included into later wall courses. The mud was dug from a pit in front of the hut and left a large hole with a volume of about 2.5 cubic metres.
The end product was a solid little hut, that should be fire and rot resistant. The whole project took 102 days but would have taken 66 days were it not for unseasonal rain.
I don’t know about you, but I think he did a pretty awesome job. Check out his Youtube-channel Primitive Technology for more, and if you LOVED the video then you can support his work on Patreon.
