. One of the recent shows also had them building a
cannon from a tree trunk (OMWC - Blacksmith making hoops for strength
and applying them hot). The myth was that this German town had made
a cannon overnight, to repel the invaders, but, it blew up on them
with the first shot, killing many townsfolk. The results, by the by,
were that the mythbusters came to the conclusion that there was NO
way that the townsfolks could have cored a tree trunk that was eight
feet or more long in a night. With hand augers, they only got a few
inches down after much struggling. They ended up using a Hole Hawg
to run the rest of the hole.

Just because they couldn't do it doesn't mean it can't be done. In our machine
era we have forgotten some of the old hand methods that worked pretty well.
Hand augers aren't necessarily the right tools to use. The cutters used for
making wooden water pipes would have gone much faster, I think. They would
have to. Or no one would have ever made a second section of pipe.

John Martin