The Knapping Thread - Show your projects, Discuss techniques, Give and receive advice

[maker_of_fire]

Here are some stone knives that I knapped and set.

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The knife on top is more of a showpiece, while the one on the bottom is really more for practical use.

I set the blade in the antler handle using really wet rawhide strips. When they dried and shrank, the blade was locked in tight - without glue or anything else.

[your_comforting_company]

Excellent work! The rawhide still has the hide glues in it so that helps with the setting. Beautiful pieces!

[preachtheWORD]

Good work. See - maker_of_fire is the guy I learned from!

[crashdive123]

Awesome work!

[canid]

Any tips on treees that make good arrow shafts?
The trees around here are:
valley oak
live oak
douglas fir
california bay
california buckeye
oregon ash
madrone

and that is basically it, at least for the few valleys that i like to play around in.None of these seem very promising from my observations.

I know that there are willow trees around here somewhere but i have to look for them, do willow trees make good arrow shafts?

straight shoots of california bay [if you can find them] make great shafts.
willow and alder make mediocre shafts, but there's no reason not to use them if they are what's handy. they like to grow in riparian environments, which makes for plenty crowded, shaded trees/shrubs with suitable straight lengths of gentle taper.

for nocks and point slots i also have had great results sawing with stone. flakes of grainy basalt or granite are particularly nice because the stone is both hard and abrasive. you can even make fine notches along the flake's edge to create teeth

[Rick]

Very nice, MOF. Those are beautiful and practical works of art!!

[preachtheWORD]

After the new baby and pushing to graduate on time, I am starting to get back into knapping again. Here is some of my more recent work.

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The point in the center is from a small piece of red and black obsidian. It's beautiful stuff, but delicate. This one took some "blood sacrifice." A cut or puncture from obsidian bleeds like nothing else.
The other two points are from a material of which I do not know the name. Below the points is a chunk of the material. The "mother stone" was a big, irregular blob from which I spalled pieces. Somebody brought it to my Dad from somewhere. Wish I knew what it is. This much I can tell you - In the words of my Dad, it was "harder than Satan's bunions."


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The two obsidian pieces were from narrow shards. The light makes them look lopsided, but they are actually fairly symmetrical. The piece on the left was from another very hard nameless stone. It was full of little crystaline inclusions that kept me from getting a good flake. The little "ear" chipped off on the left side and instead of working the whole piece down to make it match again I just left it. Makes it look more "original."


I have probably made about 50 points now, and I have given them all away except about 10. When I talk to people about the Lord I often give them an arrowhead. I have made a lot of friends this way, an usually get another chance to talk to them.

[Rick]

You are very talented. You should be very proud of those. Nice job!!

[crashdive123]

Great looking work.

[preachtheWORD]

I would love to see more pieces produced by other members. I would especially like to see points that you have set into shafts, with a tutorial if possible.

Everybody get out there and GET KNAPPING!

[your_comforting_company]

I'll do my best to get out there soon and set a few points into removable tips. I've not tried any fletching yet, but I can certainly show how to haft one.
Nice work PTW!

[Erratus Animus]

PTW and anyone else do you have any tips for working with glass? I dont have any local stone that i am aware up as I live around woods and swamp, but there are plenty of drunks and wineo's that see fit to throw their bottles out on the side of the road. I have a good supply of thick bottle bottoms to work from but as mention earlier in another post it just seems so overwhelming.

I understand the book knowledge of when and how but have not put it into application yet. I will be doing percussion with a Home-made Ishi stick, got to build that tomorrow as well

Any advice would be welcomed.

[your_comforting_company]

tips for glass:
wear safety glasses!!!
Wear pants that cover the tops of your shoes so glass doesn't fall in there.
Use something on the ground or floor to catch the shards. They are extremely sharp!
Do a really good clean-up job when you are done.
other than that, make sure you support the piece well. glass can break unpredictably when unsupported.
Wear a glove on your flaking hand too.. it will cut your hand open if you slip.
I took out some 1/4" thick plate glass windows and I've been toying with the glass a little lately. I can take some pictures of bloody hands and feet if you need positive reinforcement, lol.

I think you'll find glass super easy to work points with. The consistency and lack of impurities make it so easy it's like cheating. I'd recommend finding some kind of knappable stone, even if it's coarse and ugly, because rocks and glass do not flake the same way. Glass may be plentiful, but it's not natural and doesn't behave as such, though the same principles apply.

biggest suggestion here is BE CAREFUL! glass is dangerous stuff to work with. between bleeding hands, legs, and feet, and the chance of putting an eye out, you really need to mind your p's and q's.

[crashdive123]

PTW and anyone else do you have any tips for working with glass? I dont have any local stone that i am aware up as I live around woods and swamp, but there are plenty of drunks and wineo's that see fit to throw their bottles out on the side of the road. I have a good supply of thick bottle bottoms to work from but as mention earlier in another post it just seems so overwhelming.

I understand the book knowledge of when and how but have not put it into application yet. I will be doing percussion with a Home-made Ishi stick, got to build that tomorrow as well

Any advice would be welcomed.

Canid has also done quite a bit of work with knapping glass. He may be able to give you some pointers (pun intended).

[Erratus Animus]

Glass may be plentiful, but it's not natural and doesn't behave as such, though the same principles apply.

Unfortunately glass seems to be natural where I am. ppl throw so much of it in the river and bayou's that its not hard to find walking beside a water way. Seasonal flooding also bring a good bit of it into the woods as well.

I will break down and purchase some soon I suppose but I hate to do that knowing I will be breaking stuff. I guess that is the price of tuition.

Any Knappers in North Louisiana on the forums? Maybe East Texas Or Mississippi? I am about 3 hrs to either state.

[canid]

well, you won't [shouldn't] be doing percussion with an ishi stick, as that is a pressure flaking device.

for percussion implements copper and antler are both great for use on glass and obsidian. incidentally, i find both of those materials to work quite similarly, when compared to cryptocilicates like flint, etc.

hopefully, this advice will help more than it confuses. the important concepts; the ones which will best increase your success are very simple, and very hard for me to explain simply. it is far easier to pick up by watching than by reading.

all flaking should be done along areas of extra mass. fractures, like most things, travel along the path of least resistance, and become far more controllable when you have a continuous 'ridge' of extra mass to direct the force under. if you where to try to drive that same force along a plane, it would have no reason not to dip into the mass, and just break your piece in half.

such ridges can be seen illustrated in these pictures which i shamelessly ripped off from online:
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the great thing is that as you remove a flake, one or two such ridges are left behind on the side[s] of the flake scar. as you work along a biface edge, just sort of leap-frog them.

glass and obsidian, being especially brittle, need good preparation, or the edge you are trying to drive flakes from will just crumble. this is done by abrasion [as by rubbing with a piece of coarse stone], and by 'setup-flakes', which are small flakes created to move the edge downward [creating a lower platform] or to isolate a ridge [by removing mass along either side of it].

if you look up some of the great knapping videos on youtube you will see many knappers taking care to point out what they mean when they say platform. the important points for them are:
1. that there is a ridge mass along the area you are trying to flake off. this means that when you are trying to decide where to remove a flake, the bottom surface you are trying to drive from is thicker, and protrudes down further. this allows the force creating the fracture to travel along it, and break along that extra mass, making the fracture predictable.

2. platform preperation. you will want to abrade the sharp edge as you are working. when you do, you will see the jagged patters of the edge look a little blunter and more gradually wavy. the trick is to manipulate this edge so that as you look at it edge-on, the low spots [where the wavy line of the edge dips down; what is called 'below centerline'] are above the ridge you want to drive a flake along, so you can round it off by abrasion [making it stronger] and then strike there, driving the force under that ridge and breaking it off as a flake.

a good demonstration of both of these principles can be seen in this thread, by Jim Winn, who is quite skillfull.

here on the boards, FVR, and several others are quite skilled knappers as well.

[Erratus Animus]

I was sitting here drinking coffe when I saw that had said percussion but ment flaking. The mind says one thing and the fingers type another.

Good bad or ugly I will post my results today working on the bottle bottoms. Thanks for all the advice thus far.

[Erratus Animus]

Here is a video that goes along with the link Canid posted. It is by Jim as well.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Yl1_JRCh0

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yG-D...eature=channel

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrcdy...eature=channel

[Erratus Animus]

Sweet !!! I found the video that explains it all and answers all the question I had about knapping a bottle bottom !! check it out ans see what you think.

bottle bottom knapping
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh7pc2Q6XFI

[Erratus Animus]

Well this is what I started with and here is where I am at now. Need to make an ishi stick tomorrow to finish. My first one ever !!

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