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FromThePit From the Pit is a place for PA readers to ask questions about flintknapping and stone artifacts. I will do my best to answer your questions or point you in the right direction. My flintknapping experience is mainly producing Texas arrowheads using rock that I pick up locally. I’ve seen collections from various parts of the country, but Texas specimens are what I have personally studied. I have some real artifacts of my own and a few of them I have found myself. I’ve been knapping since 2007 but didn’t get the hang of it until 2009. I have about equal experience with modern tools and abo (aboriginal) tools. Right now, I’m developing my knapping skills in reproducing paleo points like Clovis and Plainview. I have a YouTube channel called “AllergicHobbit” where I demonstrate flintknapping. Q: When positioning the stone, how do you judge whether to hold the stone neutral, or slightly upward, or slightly downward? What are the different effects each posture produces? A: Experience tells me how to position the stone. The different angles, along with different amounts of force, produce different lengths of flakes. There is also a bit of luck involved. Q: Is there any advice you can give to a new knapper that you wish you’d had in the beginning? I’ve been knapping on and off for a while and I still feel like a beginner. Are there any benchmarks that could tell me when I’ve reached the next level? How do you know when you can start teaching other people, for example? A: When I was first learning to knap, I wish I’d known about the various grades of stone and how to spot the finest grades of stone. When I tried to make an arrowhead (and failed) I didn’t know if it was my lack of skill or if the stone was just hard to knap. Looking back, I spent hours and hours just breaking all kinds of stone that looked good and trying to feel the differences. Sometimes I spalled hundreds of pounds of stone without making a single arrowhead. I learned later that many of the failed attempts that frustrated me the most were the result of poor material or material that was not consistent. My advice to new knappers has always been to use the best material available. You can judge your progress much better when you don’t have to deal with the extra hassle of hitting the rock really hard and/or working around cracks and pockets of “concrete.” Q: The hardest part about abo knapping for me is thinning the arrowhead. I can’t seem to get the flakes to travel as far as I need them to and I end up with “fat” points. If I apply a lot of force, the tip of the tool breaks off. I can thin the points with a copper bopper or copper pressure flaker just fine. I’m using antler mainly. Is there another material that’s better? 18 FlintknappingFAQ B y P a t r i c k B l a n k www.PrimitiveArcher.com Volume 21 Issue 1 A: Whitetail deer antler and moose antler are the best materials for knapping, as far as antler is concerned. Various grades of hammerstones, from hard to soft, are also an essential part of your “thinning” toolkit. The striking platforms for antler and soft hammerstones don’t need to be as rounded off as the ones for copper. On the other hand, platforms for hard hammerstones need to be stronger than those for copper. In addition, I’ve found that hammerstones on the smaller side are easier to control and strike with than lager ones. When I first learned to knap, everyone was using large pieces of antler and large hammerstones. Your tools can be small as long as you strike accurately and with concentrated force. Tool breakage is part of the game. It can’t be eliminated. It can be reduced somewhat by keeping your antler very dry and dressed. Stone has to be dressed as well. Striking with a crumbly or irregular tip or surface causes energy to be lost and dispersed. To get flakes to travel across the piece, you’ve got to be more careful about following the rules: use the best tools and stone possible, follow ridges, hit below centerline, prepare platforms, make sure the surface is convex, support the work piece, strike carefully but purposefully, and be mentally alert and focused. Imitate the successes and forget the mistakes. Q: What is “paleo flaking”? I’ve heard a couple of guys talk about paleo flaking as opposed to woodland flaking or archaic flaking. What’s the difference? A: This terminology has been used by some collectors who want to try and understand and identify real specimens. In my opinion, these terms don’t have any value. I don’t use them. The best way to describe a knapped artifact is on an individual basis. There are too many exceptions to any general rule or observation you may try to put into place when it comes to classifying knapped stones from a certain period in history. Q: What is the best shape for a stone knife? I’m going to make some for gifts and I want them to be durable. A: The best shape for a stone blade is one that allows room for re-sharpening, has a length to width ratio of about 4 to 1, is thickest where the blade and the handle meet, has a strong tang, and doesn’t have a tip that can easily break off when you are using the knife for its intended purpose. A slick or lustrous material also helps and is similar to having a polished surface on a steel blade. A leaf-shaped, non-serrated, bi-convex, bi-face seems to be the best all-around shape and has been used at one point or another in all areas where man has used stone tools.
Q: How did the Indians heat-treat rock? I’ve seen that the heat should be between 300 to 450 degrees centigrade. Can you heat the rock inside the fire or does it always have to be buried under the fire? A: First of all, 300 to 450 degrees Celsius (the current official name for this measure of temperature) is way too hot. This is probably a typo in the article or book where you saw it. The temperature should be between 300 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, or a maximum of 320 degrees Celsius. Some stone will need higher temperatures but these are the exception. Rock was usually buried in dirt, sand, rock dust, or ashes when the Indians were heat treating their stone. It is possible to heat treat stone inside the fire itself, but the results are not predictable and the stone will not be heated evenly. The reason heat-treating works is because when the stone is heated and then allowed to cool slowly, the molecules inside the stone “line up” in a more orderly way than before the heat treating. Q: I’m setting up my platforms slightly below centerline. I have them set up to follow a ridge and I grind them slightly to strengthen them, but I can’t seem to get my flakes to cross the center. So I end up having a hump down the middle. The more I try to remove the hump, my point gets narrower and narrower. Any suggestions? A: Your platforms are not far enough below centerline, the surface is too convex, and/or the force being used is not enough to drive long flakes across the type of stone you are using. Be more aggressive until you are getting overshot flakes and then back off. Q: I’ve been working on my thinning lately, and it’s really starting to come around (as long as I use heated rock). But now I’m having trouble keeping the point weight up. Not sure what I should do to not make them so light. Seems like by the time I have the base thin enough to put in a cane shaft I’m under 100 grains. A: It’s okay to use lightweight arrowheads as long as they are not too thin. Real arrowheads are very light and they were undoubtedly effective. Many modern hunters in the “primitive” community are hunting with very small and light arrowheads (where the law permits) and they have been successful. If you really want to increase the weight in the front of the arrow, you can make the arrow longer or add a heavy foreshaft/footing to the front. If you want to increase the weight of the arrowhead itself, you can make it longer, use heavier stone, or both. Q: I have been knapping for about two years now. Everything I know has come from trial and error. I can make a fairly good arrowhead, but they are usually small (none over three inches). How can I get bigger blanks and improve overall? A: When I started, I made very small arrowheads and then progressed to larger and larger pieces. This was mainly for economic reasons, but it’s a good strategy. To get good at making very large blades (six or more inches long), you need to obtain large nodules of stone and then proceed carefully. Big rocks become small rocks very quickly! Make the preforms much bigger than you need, use the smallest direct percussion tools possible reduce the preform to the correct thickness, and then finish off with heavy pressure and/or punch work to shape and notch the workpiece, followed by light pressure for final touch up and sharpening. Use a random style of flaking until you get the hang of it, then you can progress to the fancier flaking styles on future points. Make sure you prepare all platforms well! Of course, you can also use big, thick slabs of stone or glass, but the technique is basically the same once you have the preform made. If you have a “slab” that had already been ground into the shape of a lenticular preform and all you need to do is run flakes across the surface, that is, of course, the easiest way to make any blade, large or small. It’s called FOG or “flake over grind” and many knife makers use it to save time and material. No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. –Albert Einstein www.PrimitiveArcher.com Volume 21 Issue 1 19
Page 1: Display until March 25, 2013 In Thi
Page 4 and 5: D E P A R T M E N T S Hunting Colum
Page 6 and 7: To:EDITOR ® Need my Medicine Do yo
Page 8: HuntingCOLUMN ® For thousands of h
Page 11 and 12: Straight and True: A Select History
Page 13 and 14: A scene of early- thirteenth-centur
Page 15 and 16: A fourteenth-century scene from the
Page 17 and 18: Weald with the village pigs, so tha
Page 19: included the use of packs of hounds
Page 23 and 24: arrowheads did a single man—one m
Page 25 and 26: Cannibal ceremony Paraguay River to
Page 27 and 28: Drawings of excavated Guarani Stone
Page 29 and 30: Coati which is hunted by the Guaran
Page 31 and 32: Close-up of the wooden spikes A Gua
Page 33 and 34: Current housing of the Guarani and
Page 35 and 36: Once the skins are cleaned, cut the
Page 37 and 38: Terms: Simple Plies - Fibers as des
Page 39 and 40: in each) toward what will be the kn
Page 41 and 42: Four Lakota arrows circa 1870. Priv
Page 43 and 44: further insight and information abo
Page 45 and 46: One of the things the Lakota elders
Page 47 and 48: spotted along the bottom of these f
Page 49 and 50: ocks, you can easily lose track of
Page 51 and 52: Congratulations to Ed Kleinhesselin
Page 53 and 54: C ongratulations to Thad “Soy”
Page 55 and 56: Photo 2: Colorful Flint Ridge flint
Page 57 and 58: I even had a booth. It was amazing
Page 59 and 60: handfuls of wet clay to limit the s
Page 62 and 63: Selfbows What is a selfbow? One sol
Page 64 and 65: a length of cord with knots tied. N
Page 66: Archers are used to targets where t
Page 69 and 70: In breading bowl #3 combine the fol
Page 71 and 72:
The GIFT that will always be apprec
Page 73 and 74:
Locations subject to change on some
Page 75 and 76:
Simply 1. Fill out information on r
Page 77 and 78:
VHS & DVDs by John McPherson VHS: $
Page 79 and 80:
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BOOKS & VIDEOS STRING MAKING DVD’
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