Bone tools 3: Primitive woodworking tools using beaver teeth 🦴

Earlier this year, I stumbled upon a recently deceased beaver. Once only the bones were left of the carcass, I collected its sharp teeth and made primitive wood carving tools out of them. In the next video, I will be using them for some wood carving.

0:00 Intro
0:35 The dead beaver
1:28 Gathering the beaver's teeth
2:31 Grinding the teeth into tools
4:19 Making tool handles
5:50 A first test

I'm no beaver expert, but to me it seems like this poor guy died way before its time due to a serious tooth problem. A beaver's teeth grow continuously throughout its life. The upper and lower teeth sharpen each other by grinding against their respective counterparts. Their edge should have an acute angle at the front, where the enamel is extra strong due to its iron content (hence the reddish color).

Here however, one of the lower teeth was completely flat, while its neighbor even had a kind of pointed edge at the back. Additionally, they were of drastically different length. The upper teeth didn't look much better, only one of them had some semblance of a sharp edge. Since the upper teeth are used for holding on to the wood while the lower teeth chisel away at it, I don't think this unfortunate animal was able to feed itself, and it eventually died before reaching adult age (judging by its smaller size compared to other beavers I have met).

I ground the beavers teeth sharp and monted them to pieces of elderberry branches as handles. I have since successfully begun using them on primitive woodworking projects, which will be the subject of another video soon.

#primitivetools #woodworking #bushcraft