Primitive Celt Stone Axe

Primitive Technology: Making a Celt stone axe by hand.

The manufacture of a stone axe including the handle from using only primitive tools and materials. It is a celt (pronounced “selt”) a type of axe with a polished stone head wedged into a hole or mortise at the end of a wooden handle (not to be confused with a “Kelt” referring to a Celtic person).

The head took about a week and a day to make as I chose to make it from a particularly large piece of basalt. This involved hammering, pecking, grinding and polishing the head into the final shape. The handle took a day and a morning to make.

A chisel was made from stone and a mallet made from a log. These were used to cut the tree for the handle and shape it once down. Fire was used to harden the wood and also to help shape the mortise. The axe was then used to cut down a tree the day after the handle was a tree itself. It is a more efficient tool for felling trees than the hand axe I made and at the time of uploading this video has cut down 4 trees which I will use later.

Because this stone axe is blunter than a steel one, the blade needs to hit the tree at angles greater than 45 degrees- otherwise the blade would glance off. So celts were used more like wedges than modern axes.