I believe historically that was achieved with stone tools. So you make some stone axes, hatchets, adzes, chisels, etc. You use those to bootstrap a basic metallurgy setup, including chopping the trees for charcoal.
I think energy is the bigger challenge. In Britain in the 1600s, for example, the growth rate of trees couldn't keep up with the demand for charcoal. That was one of the factors that led to the widespread mining of coal, which previously had not been a major energy source in Britain.
The easily mineable fossil fuels are pretty much depleted now. We rely on advanced technology to extract the fossil fuels that power us today. A rebooted civilization might be stuck with charcoal. In which case its energy usage would be capped by the growth rate of the forests.
A newly primitive society would use at least an order of magnitude less energy. I think coal would be easy enough to come by (if you live in Appalachia), but petrochemicals would be troube.
Is there still plenty of coal that's easy to extract with primitive technology? If so, why hasn't it already been mined? (I would think the low-hanging fruit would go first.)
The nice thing about coal is that you really just need a pickaxe and a bucket to mine it, and it's relatively close to the earth. Keep in mind that an Industrial scale coal mine needs to have massive veins in order to be efficient, so they aren't really interested in the smaller veins - but there is enough coal out there to jumpstart a new civilization many times over.
I think energy is the bigger challenge. In Britain in the 1600s, for example, the growth rate of trees couldn't keep up with the demand for charcoal. That was one of the factors that led to the widespread mining of coal, which previously had not been a major energy source in Britain.
The easily mineable fossil fuels are pretty much depleted now. We rely on advanced technology to extract the fossil fuels that power us today. A rebooted civilization might be stuck with charcoal. In which case its energy usage would be capped by the growth rate of the forests.