Making Spinifex Resin

[Dennis La Varenne]

To all,

I have seen this stuff used to glue a stone point to a wood arrow shaft and shot into the side of a riverbank from around 15m WITHOUT ANY KIND OF BINDING. The head did not move at all. It was at a TRASH Shoot a few years ago, and one of their members brought some to show a mate - Hans Stein - over here on holidays from his job as a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at a Japanese university in Osaka.

Hans had heard of it and being a traditionalist from the northern hemisphere, was used to using pine-pitch to set the points, then bind them in place using sinew. He was curious about it.

Spinifex is like a natural super-glue. It must be heated until it begins to melt, then very quickly, a dob was inserted into the point nock of the arrow and straightened in place. The resin set hard in a few minutes and the head could not be moved - all without sinew binding.

The newly headed arrow was shot into the bank several times and did not fail or even look like it. The head was blunted of course.

The TRASH blokes weren't 100% sure how it was obtained by aboriginals from their area, but I ran across this account of its extraction while reading an old book by one Donald Thomson - Bindibu Country - about the first white anthropological expeditions into the country of the Pintubi (our name for them - not theirs for themselves) west of Alice Springs and over the WA border.

Here it is for the interested. It is a Word document.


Dennis La Varenne

[Sparra]

An interesting piece of info there Dennis...Makes you wonder how they ever stumbled across it in the very beginning and whether or not it is still past on to the now generation or just forgotton about and lost like many other traditions...
Sparra...

[Dennis La Varenne]

Sparra,

I believe there are still some of the old people living out there now and passing on the culture, but I perhaps a bit diluted from the original. I don't think any of the aboriginals anywhere are living entirely as their ancestors did. It's a different world now for them as for us too., but we have had longer to get used to it.

It would be very sad for those cultures to disappear. If they can keep their languages up, their culture will survive because the two are interdependent. Their languages are tightly bound up to their ties with country.

But, as Donald Thomson discovered, they were completely open and interested to show outsiders their way of life if it was treated with respect. Most of his anthropoligical work was in the Cape and Arnhem Land, and he was very well liked by those peoples because of the respect he had for them and their cultures and an obvious willingness to learn from them and not presume any kind of superiority over them. He very often went in to bat for them with the Australian and State Governments of his day, and they seemed to have appreciated that.

Anyway, I cannot see any reason why we cannot use this little bit of knowledge these people have given us to good traditional archery use. Our ancestors used the northern hemisphere pine pitch and sinew, but I bet they would have swapped it anyday for spinifex resin if they had been able to get it. I would have been a very valuable trade commodity if the two peoples had been able to meet.

There seems to be only 4 processes involved in making it which broadly are -
1. Collection of plants;
2. Threshing and winnowing;
3. Extraction by the application of heat; and
4. Collection of exuded resin.

If ever I am out in spinnifex country, I will give it a go myself.

One of the TRASH boys who provided the sample thought the aboriginals in his area obtained it from the linings of ants nests under the spinifex. He thought they burnt off the spinifex, then dug out the ants nests which they had lined with the resin to prevent the sandy soils of the area from collapsing their tunnels. That sounds plausible to me too in addition to Thomsonn's description of the Bindibu technique.

Dennis La Varennne

[ed]

Be interested to try this myself. I wonder how flexible the glue is. Obviously strong enough for points, but what about for composite bows?

[Dennis La Varenne]

Ed,

There is only the one way to find out I suppose.

Aboriginals did not have bows generally (there is debate about this in regard to some of the Cape tribes) so it was never used for the purpose of backing (sinew backed) composite bows.

If it were useful for backing, the same principles would apply - being that is should be used on short bows because the high mass of a laminate of sinew and hide glue makes it unsuitable for best performance from long bows. High limb mass slows limbspeed even with reflex, and too much reflex will jeopardise the belly from compression fractures (frets or chrysalls) because the elastic limits of the wood may be exceeded.

I also have other doubts about its usefulness in this case because it is melted to form a thick paste, thicker by far than toothpaste, and has an extremely short pot life when heated. The high viscosity of the resin together with the extremely short pot life that I observed would mitigate against use as a backing material.

There's nothing to stop you having a go though. Perhaps one of the TRASH blokes may have something to offer.

Dennis La Varenne

[archangel]

Dennis, Ed and others ...

Sorry I missed this thread (way down the index). I did write on this very topic some time ago - here is the link. http://www.ozbow.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.p ... ight=resin

Some years ago I took a journey with a local Ngoongar elder and some younger lads. One of the crafts he passed on to us over the campfire was making this resin glue, in this case to make a simple axe by mounting a sharp stone to a handle. He mixed dried kangaroo dung (=fibres) to equal quantities of charcoal and resin. The mixture was crushed on a flat rock near the fire and the mixture sprinkled over the stone head. By constant melting and adding more resin mix, the stone was eventually bonded to the handle (see below). I have tried this on trad points and it certainly works - you must make sure that fibre is added to bind the resin however.

*Note: the resin also makes a beautiful wood stain when crushed and mixed with metholated spirits - almost identical to shellac. (I didn't learn that one from the elder). I still have plenty of this resin left - send a PM if you want to try some.

[archangel]

Stone point attached to haft using resin.

[bsrecurve]

just finished watching an old Malcolm Douglas video here at uni.
the video had footage of the resin being processed, made and used - very interesting stuff. i've always enjoyed his films.....


btw: it was an old "world around us" episode called "Return to the desert"

[Dennis La Varenne]

Archangel,

I am pretty sure I have seen heaps of Grass Trees over here in Victoria, especially in some of the South Gippsland forests where I have gone Hog Deer hunting in the past. We call them Black Boys over here. The Victorian aboriginals used the resin from around the base of these 'trees' as a strong glue by a similar method to what you describe. The added fibre seems to be a pretty important ingredient . . . more so than with spinifex resin it would seem.

Anyway, I will keep an eye open for grass tree resin whenever I seen any around.

Dennis La Varenne