I have begun learning the process of flintknapping hands-on. I have done a good amount of research, and am familiar with a handful of concepts and terms within the skill, and have decided that youtube can help me no further.
I have also decided to start with glass. The bottom of beer bottles, to be exact. My neighbor's yard and the sidewalk parallel to it is a rich source of naturally occurring beer bottles (I haven't asked why...). I figured that I would get some of the basic learning out of the way by simply making an edge with glass and then reducing it and reducing it until there's hardly any glass left. It may seem like a waste, but I'm not in the business for making a trophy just yet, I am focusing on getting as much practice out of ever gram of material as possible.
Here's some pictures of the piece before I finished reducing the wall of the bottle down to the bottom; along with a picture from the side to show the flaking pattern, which is crude because this part I find to be easy and like to just get it done with. Detail and careful planning will come in when I get the 'walls' off.
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The uniform bumps in the second image are from the bottle's original shape. I wish I could make my flakes that uniform...
At this very point in time, I have it reduced to just the bottom, and am trying to uniform the edge to make it easier to plan my strikes later on. I will post another picture when that's complete.
A few notes:
-Maintaining Good Form
I found that I get a little bit worse and worse as I go and a good way to fix that is to stop knapping, take a look at the piece to determine what should be done next, and most importantly, correct my grip on my billet (which is my pocket knife's back end). Just correcting the grip improves my accuracy back to where it was and seems to give me larger more uniform flakes. Perhaps not everybody has this problem, but I loosen and loosen my grip as I go subconsciously and I pay for it, so the first thing I do when it start to get difficult is check my grip, the angle of the piece, and if that's really where I should be working on it.
-Correcting Flukes and Problem Areas
I found that working on larger areas and not stopping to correct any flukes has helped a lot. I used to get frustrated at overly large flakes or difficult areas to flake at all, and I would focus on solving that area, which would break the piece or ruin the pattern I have going. It's treated me much better to do large passes even when focusing on the fluke or problem area to avoid making the edge uneven. This may prove the be different when I start to shape the actual object, for now I am just removing the edge from bottom...
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