3 HN users recommended this demo3 months2016–2018score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN people link it as a satisfying demonstration of hand-powered drills being made from nothing.
Primitive Technology shows building a cord drill from scratch and then upgrading it to a pump drill, using only primitive materials like a stone flywheel and cord.
“If you're interested in seeing someone make these take a look at this Primitive Technology video” (HN, 2017)
I definitely agree. I think this is the video you mentioned. I have watched it myself many times as well. "Primitive Technology: Cord drill and Pump drill" > [this video]
If you're interested in seeing someone make these take a look at this Primitive Technology video and the others he produces: [this video] Make sure you turn on captions to see descriptions of what's going on.
Oh the title sounds familiar, on the other hand no talk in mind .. great. ps: his fire starting example reminded me of this, [this video] (no supermarket involved though)
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes