Rez Zircon

Io moth caterpillar spines. Yikes!

I believe I took this at 50x magnification (with a cheap little toy called an "Eyeclops"). You can see a drop of venom at the tip of the spine at the top left.

Isaiah Hudson wrote:This caliper probably like this one, but the caterpillar poked me with its fur, and I don’t know what kind of caterpillar has poked and when it poked me, my knee is swollen and I have to get taken to the hospital

Could be an Io moth caterpillar -- their spine venom is quite toxic, and can cause a painful, rapidly spreading dermatitis. (They are sure beautiful, and native here, but I ain't touching 'em!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automeris_io

However it is not the only one.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm1414613

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539851/

Search for "erucism" and there are tons more links.

Timothy Norton wrote:Eric,

I wonder if you can obtain some and soak it in a bucket of water? I'd imagine if there is dye that it would run into the water and be suspended.

You can get brown pigment out of pure wood mulch too, just normal oxidation products. When I potted trees in plain sawdust, any water that filtered out was a rather ugly brown. What started as bright sawdust also aged to reddish-brown and then dark brown.

Something to be aware of when stone-grinding grain -- some grit comes off the stone and ends up in the flour, and it's really hard on your teeth, even if you don't notice it. Historically, it was common to see teeth worn down to the gumline from eating  the resulting bread.

William Wallace wrote:Permethrin is a very effective spray, but some caution against having it against your skin.

Sawyer who sells it suggests spraying it directly onto dogs, and that it slowly seeps out from their glands over a few months.

I would rather risk some Permethrin than Lyme, but that is my choice.

I sprayed it directly on myself (and in my bed) for years, when I lived where the fleas were knee-deep. "Repel-X" horse spray to be precise, and I found half-strength sufficed. Also used it on the dogs daily, to keep flies from chewing their ears off. As you say, it is a much smaller risk than the various diseases. Pyrethrin comes from an African chrysanthemum; permethrin is the synthetic form, and has a little more duration, but either one disappears within a day or less.

Turkeys also eat ticks, but we have wild turkeys and you can't tell that they make any difference.

You'll be lifting toolbags and climbing around in odd spaces. That counts too.

Also, consider that any time you're not doing something else, you can be flexing an arm with a dumbbell.

LOL, yes, I understand that desire. More than discovering how they did stuff, you'll also uncover some of how they developed those methods. Reinventing stone-age tech from the ground up! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I would hazard there isn't any "authentic" style, but rather a whole lot of them, as varied as the hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers we know about historically, but probably considerably more advanced than those whose lifestyles survived to the present (because those that outgrew the stone age were sophisticated enough to presage the age of metalworking, and here we are today).

Our stone-age ancestors weren't dumb, and certainly were creative in the same ways modern humans are. And as you say very little preserves that wasn't stone, but it stands to reason anything available that could be worked by hand got used. Neanderthal camps have revealed that they had birch-sap glue and little portable oil lamps, and lately there was discovered the remains of a shaped-log cabin that had been preserved because it had partially burned. (I have long contended that we have so little of their tech because they used a great deal of wood.)

I expect stone-age lives were full of objects made from wood, fiber, leather, and other animal products that didn't preserve, and that pretty much anything you can make (or decorate) without a gas-fired forge is fair game. Otzi was stone age, but he was not a primitive.

And there's evidently a lot of interest beyond our little corner of the internet. "Primitive Technology" on Youtube has over 10 million subscribers. He makes all sorts of stuff starting with just himself and whatever he can find in the wild. (My favorite was the brick tiny-house with a tile roof, fireplace, and a sort of hypocaust, but he's also made little iron knives from rust bacteria found in streambeds. Gonna be some puzzled future-archeologists.)

I quite like your stone-age garments and toolkit. Looks functional, comfortable, and useful, what more do you want?

Mondo! Congrats!!

Not only a new career, but essential work that keeps the lights on. What could be better?

I know the local electrician would grab you and make you into an apprentice... they never have enough people.