Working With the Universal Tool Kit

The Universal Tool Kit, as set down in his excellent book, ‘The Universal Tool Kit”, by Paul Campbell, is more than just a great read, putting the pieces together is all important. You have no need of experience in flintknapping, and if you do, that’s okay, but it is not required. It is really simple and when put into practice, the simplicity shines through. It is so simple, as to be deceiving, and you find yourself saying is that it? The answer is yes, that’s it.

Like all of Paul Campbell’s books, his research and practice of the skill is first rate, his explanations are clear and sometimes set in anecdotal style, that makes it leap off the page. what is it? It is stone or rock bashing, or as Paul puts it controlled bashing, breaking rocks that you can use as tools.

The practice goes back 100s of thousands of years. The stone tools we are talking about were often overlooked by the experts as trash, left over and not used. New evidence shows that experts were wrong in most cases. Paul cites where these are found and the reasons they were ignored. And it happened all over the world. Even today it is still being used today by primitive peoples.

A long quote from the book that I feel sets up the tone, for use by you. “In contrast, in our world of metal, modern survivalists are for the most part utterly dependent on the economies of big government, big corporations, centralized super-populated societies and the high technology, mass produced, specialized gear such societies produce: Cell phones, geo-locator devices, sophisticated specialist-dependent weaponry, compasses, space blankets, nylon packs, factory made sleeping bags…. It is even rare for students of traditional skills today—citizens of the rule—oriented, plastic, computer-dominated, virtual world. To go to the woods, the desert or the mountains, or, if in the forest, to leave the safety of a campsite and the park service toilets. Even rarer it is to leave behind our metal axes and knives and pick up a rock we might find anywhere and make of it a tool. In short, to reunite completely with nature”

It is not that hard to do basic stone and rock technology, it is in our DNA. All you need to start is a few rocks that our common ancestors used with success, for longer than we can count. The universal tool kit is so light that it is all in your brain. As long as you still have your head, you have the kit with you. Simple stone technology puts you where we belong, in the long line of humanity. It seems that the thin false wall of civilization, as Paul says, “we turned away from our stone age souls, a pretense that diminishes everyone.” By using the universal tool kit it gives one the feeling of a familiar and ancient connection. It just feels right.

A few of us have had the experience in the field with Paul, as he showed us the way of the stone and its myriad uses. To see Paul throw a stone at a huge rock face cliff and the resulting breakage into a few useful tools, from a tool sharp enough to skin a critter with to a hammer stone to grind acorns, was a life lesson of our ancestors. So the past does count for something. Paul tells with pictures his manufacture of an atlatl and the dart all with a few chips of stone. First he created a chopping stone, with one break to take down a willow and he trimmed it with the sharp chips of stone. He mounted the hook for the dart to fit into and with cordage tied it to the atlatl. For the darts, he used one stone, broke it in half by a controlled bash and using the stone like a rasp drew the dart between the two halves. He skinned the bark from the dart, or spear as smooth as sand paper would have done. In about two hours a completed atlatl.

So I took stone in hand and tried to duplicate the lesson, and made an atlatl. Not as pretty as I wanted, but functional never the less. My first attempt, while crude, was a huge learning experience. From rock you can develop choppers, hand axes, bi-faces, scraper planes, and blades.

By Dude McLean

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