Horseshoe Crab Tail Spear made with primitive tools

Every summer, countless horseshoe crabs invade my part of the world. For a few weeks, the beaches here are literally covered by their shedded shells. The tail of these shells are pointy, flexible, and extremely tough. So today, I'm going to make a Horseshoe crab tail spear using all primitive techniques. This is a unique weapon that was historically used by the Lenape, a large tribal confederation that controlled this region over 3 hundred years ago. 17th century European colonists observed these spears as being used by the natives for fishing. The barbs along the tail certainly lends itself to the task.

So first, I needed to get some primitive wood working tools. I smashed a block of serpentine against a boulder to produce a crude handaxe. I then collected chunks of Quartz to make flakes for fine woodworking. Finally, I found a sandstone pebble for hammering and abraiding.

With my handaxe, I proceeded to chop down a small sapling. Well chopping is not the right word, it's more like slowly chewing through the wood fibers. After that, I chopped off small branches, removed the excess trunk, and ended up with a rough spear shaft. This was an extremely labor intensive task that took me over 30 minutes to do.

Then using the quartz flakes I began to remove the bark and shape the tip of the spear. This took a very VERY long time. Every few minutes, I had to strike a new flake since quartz has a sharp but extremely brittle edge . At times, I was so tempted to use my steel hatchet to speed things up, but ended up sticking with the primitive cutting tools. The Lenape Indians of this region would trade a year worth of fur for a single European steel knife and a young woman for a steel axe. After over an hour, I finally finished shaping the tip.

Next, I scored the base of the tail and snapped off the excess materials. Then using the abrasion stone, I abraided the base until it became smooth. Using a twiq, I separated the tip of the spear and insert in the base of the tail. Then I dug up some root cordage and I tightly lashed the tail to the spear shaft. This spear took me over 2 hours to craft. And I must admit I was pretty pleased with it. The Horseshoe crab tail spear looks dangerous and durable. And I could definitely see it as being good for spearfishing. Anyways, thanks so much for watching, if you like to see more videos like this, please like, share, and subscribe to my channel. See you laters!