Thank you.
The first step of flint knapping is to obtain your material.
Here we are at Glass Buttes in Central Oregon, which is controlled by the BLM out of Primeville.
We suggest that you always stay on the roads when going to Glass Buttes and look for the
pits that are normally surrounded by the different colored pieces of obsidian.
Each pit can be identified by its own color.
Try to only dig in the pits as we want to maintain the resource.
It's right up here.
Okay.
This is the overburden layer, and then you start hitting the solid flow.
The solid flow runs from here, clear on down, and physically, this is what we're standing on.
It's right here.
Now, the farther down you go normally, the less weathering you get.
So you get some weathering here and then smaller pieces with a few bigger ones
that will stick up that won't break up.
But normally, the farther you go down,
the bigger this stuff has a tendency to get.
Now, this is not solid at all.
What that is, you've got a bunch of cracks.
All of this is little cracks.
By using a little rock hammer,
you can get in and find those cracks.
And you can work into those cracks
and then get a steel bar to break apart the big ones.
Normally, what I do is I work straight down.
And this will then,
we'd work down here
and we would knock out all the loose ones,
the little ones,
to expose bigger nodules.
These.
That's what we're really after.
So,
what we're gonna do is
hammer these out.
Just go around them.
Now, that's a,
as you can see, it's not as big as it appeared to be.
Just use your little hammer
and just kind of poke around here.
Knock out.
You've got a lot of small ones
for arrowhead size flakes,
but what we're after is some bigger ones.
A lot of them that look big,
a lot of times turn out not to be big.
But this one's gonna be fair size.
There's a couple of nice blades hiding in that one.
The idea
is to dig straight down first.
And then, after you've dug straight down,
then you can work on the sides
and collapse, dig what you want out here,
and then the whole hole will collapse
and keep getting bigger around.
But you get the nicest stuff when you're down low.
You can't always pry these out
just with a
rock hammer.
But if you can,
then do it because you're less likely to put
cones
and that type of thing into it.
We're gonna see if we can
get this bigger one here to move a little bit.
Trying to work our way around it.
There, looks like it's moving a little bit.
This one's gonna come out fairly easy.
Just pry it.
That's what we're looking for right here.
About 80, 90 pounds.
Okay, that's what we're after.
That's why we go down.
A couple of normally loose ones
will be around the sides of it now.
Just put it there.
And we'll
see if there's another one right in here.
Might be all right.
There's another one.
Okay, we're gonna try to make a cone
which makes flint knapping possible.
It's the cone that, and the angle of the cone
that is predictable,
makes flint knapping completely predictable
so that you are in control of the rock
just by understanding the cone.
To make a cone,
I'm gonna drop this quartzite rock
down onto that piece of obsidian.
And hopefully we will be able to
hopefully we will wind up with a nice cone.
If you're ready,
we will drop her down right there.
As you can see,
flakes that came off
would actually come right back on
to make a cone.
That cone always is that shape.
All right, from left to right,
these are the tools that we'll be using
to do our major spalling with.
We have a heavy copper,
it's a foot long,
two and a half inches in diameter,
weighs about 17 pounds.
The copper next to it is six inches long,
same diameter,
weighs a little bit less than that,
weighs about six and a half, seven pounds.
Quartzite hammerstone weighs about four pounds,
which is in the middle.
And then we have a couple of
softer sandstone type hammerstones
that go down to about a pound and a half,
and the smallest one is maybe six ounces or so.
And a leather pad to protect ourselves.
The idea on spalling is to
be able to push the flake off.
We're not hammering it off,
we're pushing it off.
And so the weight of your hammer is really critical.
If you don't have a heavy enough hammer,
you're going to swing harder
to try and compensate for that,
and you get a lot more shatter,
and you get a lot heavier
wave going through the rock
that then you don't get a smooth and nice surface off.
Or you just plain don't get the flake to dislodge
to start with, cause it's not big enough.
Okay, being as flat as it is on the top,
we pretty much just cleaved the whole piece right in two.
Split the whole bowl right.
All right, now we are going to spall
one half of the big piece that we first broke up.
Using the cone principle,
we're going to be able to use this as a platform
and take big enough flakes off the side
to be able to make whatever size
blades that we really want.
So, the principle is, is with this rock
or my percussion dropping straight down
and hitting on the edge here,
if it came straight down on this,
I would have the angle of my cone
would direct how much I'm going to take off.
Okay, so, so if I have my percussion coming down like this,
it's going to come this direction.
If I tip this up like this,
and my piece still comes down, I take off less.
The higher I raise it, the less I'm going to take.
The lower I raise it, the more I'm going to take,
cause the angle is always going to be the same.
Alright, so now we're going to
use some pads to protect ourselves,
and we're going to support it,
and we're going to use our same stone.
Tip it up a long ways,
and we're just going to take off
this little ridge right here.
Okay.
Now, there was a previous crack, or weak spot,
from when the rock was dug out across the top,
so when I hit this, not only did I take my flake off there,
but I broke this in two-two.
From a previous cone right there.
But this is the flake that we wanted, right here.
Nice and flat, with a flat surface
followed the ridge down.
Now we've created another ridge here,
and another ridge here, to take advantage of,
to using this platform to take off another one right beside it.
Support is really key.
So, we're going to, again, hit it right here,
coming down here, and then cleaving off this flat spot there.
Now, sometimes, there's a pretty flat flake there.
The piece ran on through.
It's got a previous crack in it, here, and here,
so that has affected how the flake's coming off.
And, actually, I'm going to tap it there,
and clean it off to this previous crack,
and get rid of some of that previous crack.
Just tap it lightly.
There's still a big crack in it, right here.
We know it's solid here.
I'm going to go ahead and take another flake off on this end, here.
We're not trying to make a big piece out of this.
What we're trying to do is make a whole bunch of nice, workable flakes.
Like that.
Now, we're going to go ahead and try to take some of this cortex off, here,
and maybe eliminate some of the cracks that are in there.
Just one good, clean hit.
Got a nice flake off.
You can see we still got an old crack area in there.
Doesn't look like it goes much deeper.
It looks like that's about the edge of it.
Now, we've got this ridge, right here.
If we want to try and save most of this as one big piece,
we'll take a flake off, here, and clean off this pointed ridge.
You can see it's pretty pointed, here.
On this angle, if you hold this, the angle here is less than 90 degrees,
and that's really critical.
Got less than 90 degrees, and we've got a ridge.
So, now we're going to try and clean up this.
It may not make a good flake,
but it should clean up most of the garbage on there.
I'm pushing fairly hard in here.
I'm trying to support and get the force to run down that ridge,
even though the piece may break apart that is detaching.
Well, it didn't break apart like I thought it might,
but we didn't get quite as much as I would have liked to have gotten.
But you can see how it just follows down the ridge.
Got another ridge, here.
Looks pretty clear.
Should be able to get a nice flake off of there, then.
Again, I'm pressing it hard into my leg to keep it from moving,
giving it a good support.
My knees are real close together, supporting the whole thing.
That way I don't have to hit it as hard,
and that way I'm not so likely to shatter it or break the piece in two.
Okay, real nice flake.
At the same time, we're leaving a pretty big, getting flatter type of piece.
Because it is so flat, if I try and take another piece off here,
it will not carry all the way through.
It will only go part way and hinge out.
So what we're going to do is we're going to come back here to the corner,
we're going to take off a flake here, giving it a flake there,
and that should then make it so we can release another flake over here.
Now, we've got a little bit of an overhang.
It's too thin.
If I hit that, it's just going to shatter.
So I want to get rid of that.
I'll use another smaller hammer stone.
Just kind of abrade it, just drag it across that edge.
Still a little bit more.
Okay.
It's still slightly dipped, so I can't get into it,
so I'm going to have to take off a little more.
All right.
Okay, now we'll try and take off a flake right in this area.
A little smaller hammer because I'm taking off a little smaller flake.
Same kind of action, just a nice flat flake.
That creates a little bit of a ridge here.
We'll actually go ahead and clean this ridge here off first.
That will isolate this ridge even more.
Okay.
What you see is when you look at the end,
when you look at the end of the piece,
what we've got is we had a pretty square type piece,
and we're trying to give it a ridge.
It's not a steep ridge, but by removing this flake and then this flake,
we've given this a much more pronounced ridge.
Now we'll come to here and we'll do the same thing and get rid of this.
That will isolate that, and then we can get one more big flake off that.
Just a small one.
Notice on this one here, it illustrates how the force will just follow straight down a ridge.
Look how long and narrow.
It'll just follow. The force will go equally down a ridge.
Now we'll take off one more.
It'll be still kind of long and narrow, but wider than the last one.
It didn't go as far as we would have liked it, but it's all right.
Still a nice arrowhead flake.
Now we've got this old cone that was in there from pouring. We're going to eliminate all that old chatter.
Now we're going to come back down that ridge, supporting it, pushing it actually right into my leg.
It should then go all the way down clear to the other end by supporting it real well, actually pushing it into the leg.
Another real nice flake.
Now that's created more of a ridge here so we can hit here and thin this one big piece out.
Another real nice flake.
We're not going to get big ones because we want to save the whole core.
At this point, we'll probably just save this just the way it is for preforming out later into one large big biface.
Now we'll demonstrate, might scan down to all of the different flakes that we've got here out of this one piece.
We actually have enough pieces to make a number of points in the excess from four to six to eight inches long.
Without a lot of chunky lost pieces.
Now we have a rounded river cobble. Unlike the nice flat surface of the last piece that we had for a platform, we've got this very rounded piece.
And because of the water tumbling it down the stream bed and that, it has a tremendous amount of these cones that are overlapping all over the outside.
And that's known as basically bruising the rock. It's all bruised over the whole outer surface creating this bruised cortex.
It's hard to tell what kind of quality of material it is until you take off a flake to find out whether it's really nice nappable material or has a nice color or whatever that you may be looking for.
So the first thing that we need to do is try and break this open so that we can determine the color and also set up platforms to be able to take off bigger flakes.
So obviously it's a smaller piece to start with.
But what we're going to do is we're going to, using our cone, we're going to come straight down and hit it here and then our cone will cleave one end of it off.
And that will set up our platform for then taking other flakes off.
So the first thing we'll do is we'll use our hammer stone again, we'll support it, and we'll actually come down like this and split the end off of it.
Okay, so I'm pushing it hard, supporting it hard in my leg. I don't want it to bounce around.
By supporting it, it doesn't take as much force to hit it, to break it as if you're hitting it and it's moving around you're going to lose too much force.
So I push it into my leg well.
And we'll split the piece and that end off.
Now I hit it at a pretty good angle so that the first piece would come out fairly flat.
And at the same time we've created that nice flat surface for taking a whole series of flakes off.
So we've got more arrowhead size and dart size than maybe knife blades.
But nonetheless, this material is, I would call it a medium quality.
It's not a great quality. It has some little bubbles in that in it, but it will nap fine.
It may just not have a real clear look when it's done.
So we've got the one big flake now that we can reduce.
And then we will try and take off a series of flakes.
All right, here we go.
Now we're going to use this as our platform and by the same thing, depending on the angle that we hit it,
we should be able to remove part of this cortex to start with.
These outer flakes aren't going to be of much value so we don't want them real big, we just want to take that cortex off.
Keep them thin, just get rid of the bruising area here.
See how if there's any cracks that may go into it from an old cone pretty hard.
Okay, there's one.
Now we've got, that's going to create a ridge right here.
We're going to trim off a little bit of overhang and a little bit more overhang.
Now we're going to take off another one down this ridge right there.
Okay, that one's a fairly usable flake, but it looks like the bruising isn't very deep in there.
So that would be a nice arrowhead flake.
Probably actually a pretty good flake in that one as well, that first one we took off.
Now we're going to take off one here.
Because of the negative cone from the first flake that we took off, we've got this little hook,
makes it hard to get into, so we're going to just remove that.
Kind of scratching the surface there, it gives the percussion a little place to grab.
It's not as slick as over here.
By just scratching that surface up, the powder from the stone acts as a gripping agent,
as well as the scratches that you put into the surface.
Now we're going to take one off here, a small one, and then take a longer one off there.
Okay, isolated this into more of a ridge.
Now we'll try and take a little bit longer one off, like that.
That's a good usable flake for reducing down.
Now we've got a ridge here and a ridge here.
We can take off bigger flakes if we come to this edge and get rid of this first,
then we should be able to come back and take off the bigger one there.
So we'll clean this one off.
Now that we've done that, we may try and just take a whole big flake off that side first.
Like that.
Then we'll come back and take one off here.
We did a little hard and shattered one piece, but still a good flake.
Take this whole end off as a ridge and there'll be another flake.
Nice, thin flakes.
Okay, now I'm using a hitting motion like this.
We can change that, and on smaller pieces we will.
You can use more of a dragging action, and actually when they get small enough to hold in your hand
and support in your hand, you can get thinner flakes like this.
You get real thin little flakes.
Some of them, after you set up, will be quite useful.
Like this.
Get a real thin flake.
I don't know where I need to be.
We'll be using for percussion.
Basically that will take all of the flakes that we just produced
and we will continue to reduce them down now to biface shapes.
Some of them can be a finished tool, can be made completely with just percussion work.
I have an assortment of coppers, four different ones, all different weights.
I have two different moose antler billets, and I have two soft hammer stones,
and then I have two brater stones.
One brater stone is a natural sandstone, and the other stone is a carburendum, a man-made material.
Then of course the leather pad again to protect yourself.
It's the same with these tools as with the spalling tools.
The heavier the flake, the bigger flake you want to reduce down,
and then you've got to have the bigger percussion to strike it off.
Then as you work down and get thinner and thinner in the smaller flakes,
you need less weight to take that flake off.
So this is pretty much all that you'd need.
Maybe another assortment of hammer stones.
If you're just into hammer stones, you would need to have,
instead of the coppers and that, you'd have to have bigger hammer stones to do the same thing.
Okay, we're going to start with a large spall that was taken off of about a hundred pound boulder.
And like most spalls, it'll have a relatively flat surface,
and then you will have normally your ridge, your dorsal ridge.
What we want to do is obviously try and save as much of the piece as we can for lengthwise and widthwise.
And if we could get this ridge off, why then we would have a better chance of having as big a piece as we could.
So the idea is to create a platform to be able to take flakes off
and take some big massive flakes off to reduce this down.
So the first thing that we're going to do is create a platform at the proper angle
so that we can be able to strike and take big flakes off.
Now since we're taking big flakes off, we want to use a big percussion.
In this case, it's a copper one.
The first thing we'll do is take off flakes to set up our platform.
Now once we've created the right angle, in this case we've created our bevel or our angle here
so that we can hit a platform here and reduce the flakes down this way.
Now we're not necessarily trying to save these flakes, but we are trying to thin the whole piece down.
These flakes could be used to make other things.
The first one could have went a little farther.
The second one, though, will be a little wider, travel down, hopefully a little farther.
Taking off the ridge.
But every time you take off a ridge, you are essentially still making two more smaller ridges.
So those will be the ridges that we'll take off next.
The most pronounced one is this one, so this is the one that we will take off next.
Now to get those flakes to travel, it has to be supported real well,
especially because we have a little hump right there.
So now we're going to take off this ridge here.
We have to support it real well to get it to travel that far, even though we have a heavy percussion,
and that we want that flake to travel, so I'm actually going to push it right into my leg.
It didn't go quite as far as we would have liked it to, but it didn't hurt us.
We'll now set up from the other end, and then we will also set up from the side.
So we'll set our platform.
Looks like we have an old crack in there, so that may not be the best platform,
but we'll take off what we can.
Going up into that higher area.
Now we'll come from this side.
We're setting up our platform.
Now we'll try and take off a flake down this ridge into that mass.
Come on. There we go.
That part of it.
We'll set up our platform again.
We'll go a little bit lower.
Braiding the edge so that sure edge doesn't shatter.
There we go.
Now that will make this more of a pronounced ridge so that we can take it off.
Always looking for ridges.
Setting up ridges.
Setting your platform up right on that ridge to be able to follow that ridge right down.
You can see that it just comes right down that ridge.
Taking most of the material now off of the sides rather than off the length
so that we can maintain as much length as we can.
Most of the flaking has all been done off of just that one face leaving that flatter face,
but as the piece gets thinner now we'll try and take out the ridges that are on both sides,
basically preforming it into a usable bi-face
and creating an edge all the way around the whole piece.
Always setting up to take off those ridges.
Good ridge that will follow all the way across.
Clear over.
At this point the piece is thin enough that we will drop down in size to a smaller copper billet.
The flakes that are going to come off are way less so we don't need as big of a billet.
Still taking off those ridges.
Setting up our platforms to be able to take off those ridges.
Taking out this ridge right here.
Just follows right down the whole length of the ridge.
The ridge runs this way. You can see how that force will just follow the whole ridge.
Following ridges and setting up ridges is the key thing to understanding flint mapping.
What we're going to try and do is we're going to try and save one face.
In this case I think we'll try and save this face and then reduce the rest of this ridge here out.
We've already got the right angle which is less than 90 degrees.
We're going to try and just take a couple of flakes off here and make a flatter flake out of this one to biface.
We're not going to biface the piece, we're just going to make the whole piece flatter.
We're going to take it off a little at a time though.
Take off one and we're going to take off another one and I support it as best I can.
In this case I'm going to support it on the outside of my leg to get that force to when I hit it to be able to run farther.
We've got it to run all the way down there by supporting that whole piece so the force has to go straight down.
Now we're going to just take off a couple of other ridges.
There, this other side.
I'm not trying to take huge big flakes off.
We've got a lot of stepping in here, we're not worried about that because we're going to come from the other end now and we're going to change our angle.
Our angle for taking flakes off this face is wrong so we're going to change our angle and go from a slope basically this way to a slope this way.
You can see how we've changed the bevel of the slope now.
Now we can come and take flakes off this side and clean up all of these little steps that we created.
This is a different platform.
We've got a pump right here.
Now normally you can't go from less mass basically where it's thinner here into a thicker area without it breaking.
It'll want to break right here.
But if we support it really, really well so that this flake here can't detach in a side, in an outward fashion like this,
the force will, even though it may break the flake, the force should run straight through and break that knob off.
So I'm going to push it hard into my leg, the knob into the pad and this part here especially into the pad.
Push it hard in and then hit it hard enough that it will, even though the flake broke right at that hump, it still pushed the rest off like that.
That's exactly what we're trying to do.
Knowing that it's going to break there, but by supporting it real well so that this force, when you hit it,
can't just go to this point, break out and lose your force this way, it actually punches the rest of the flake on off like that.
Keeping the face of your billet nice and smooth is very, very important.
It gets little pits and nicks in it and it basically makes it softer because it has to cut through those little nicks
and get to the solid material before it can dislodge the flake.
So you always want to keep your billet well dressed.
And we do that with just a little file.
There's a lot of different ones you can get.
This is what I like to use.
With the antler billets, we're normally working on smaller pieces than we did with the copper.
Copper is pretty aggressive on obsidian especially.
And so once it gets thin or if you already have a thinner spall,
then I just strictly use either soft hammer stones or antler billets.
Here we're going to use an antler billet.
The approach is basically the same.
You've got a thin area, you're going to get rid of that sharp edge and so that you can create a striking platform.
Now the thinner the piece gets, the more platform preparation you have to give it.
So in this case, we've got again a flat surface, relatively flat surface, and then we have a definite ridge.
So what we're going to do is we're going to go around the piece and try to create a single working edge all the way around it.
And to start with, we like to get rid of the real sharp edges that may naturally be occurring so that we just don't cut our hand.
We also have a crack here.
So there's a concern about an old crack in this.
So we'll work on that and try and eliminate that before you get too deep into the piece only to have it break.
The inclination is to attack this ridge right to straight off,
which is okay provided that your platform, your striking platform, is below what we call the center of the mass.
This piece is two inches thick.
If you hold it up like this, there would be a center line right through the middle.
You always take your flakes off below the center line.
In this case, this side, if you roll it over here, you would have to take them off this side.
Since the angle is wrong, you cannot take them off this side here.
So you would have to take them off of this face.
So instead of attacking that ridge straight on, we're going to take them off this face here
and we're going to approach it from the thin edge
and basically alternate flake it around until we can set up our platform to come down that ridge.
Take off big flakes and then a lot of them are little trim flakes,
in other words, to set the angle up right.
So we may just be taking off a couple of little ones
to set up the angle right to be able to take the ridge down.
We've created now a platform to come down this ridge somewhat
following the ridges.
Alternate flaking again to create our edge.
Just almost exactly the same procedure as with the copper,
but you don't have as much mass weight here,
so the flakes you dislodge aren't going to be as big.
It's not quite as aggressive, or doesn't seem to be quite as aggressive, as the antler.
The antler isn't quite as aggressive as the copper, I should say.
Into the old crack area here now, and now we're trying to eliminate this old crack.
Maybe coming from both sides.
Okay, at this point we've created a rough preform.
It just has a single edge all the way around the piece.
It's not completely straight, but it's getting there.
We now have a biface that we're going to reduce down into a thinner biface
with our antler billet.
As we get thinner, the piece has to have more isolated platforms that are prepared better
so that we can take more controlled thinner and thinner pieces off.
We have one side that's already fairly flat, and one side that's a little bit more domed.
The key thing to remember is the center line.
You can't take flakes off above a center line.
This line here, or the working edge here, is not necessarily on the center line.
It can be above, below, or right on it.
This whole piece, the center line theory is a hard concept for a lot of people to grasp.
But basically, however thick your piece is, there is an imaginary center line that goes right through it.
So if it's a half inch thick, then it's at a quarter inch.
And all the flakes have to be removed definitely below the center line.
If I want to take them off this face, this working edge is above the center line.
So if I try to take a flake off of here, the only way that I could do it would be to take a very steep flake off,
because if I tried to take a real driving flake, it would just break the piece in two,
because the working edge is above the center line.
Now, so the first thing I have to do is I have to move this center line, or this working edge, below the center line.
So that will be the first step.
The first step would be just preparing that platform with little steep shear flakes.
So we're not trying to take big flakes off.
We are just taking little steep flakes.
Now, I only did it in one area here.
And you can see this edge then, which was close to this face, is moving this direction.
OK, you can see now it's closer and closer to this other face.
Now, we don't have to go, in this case, it's already below the center line.
In this case, it's still not quite.
But we can take some flakes off and then thin this mass down so that this edge will be below the center line.
So we don't want to take too much off the ends, but we want to prepare our platforms so that it's below the center.
And we abrade it.
So we have those little shear flakes, and then we abrade it, creating a good, heavy platform.
Striking the platform, we can then take deep thinning flakes off.
Now then, we don't want to hit too close to this other spot.
We want to come down here to this next lowest platform and take the next thinning flake off there.
OK.
Now you can see that our line is all of a sudden definitely below the center. That's really important.
Big thinning flakes out.
Go clear across. Big thinning flakes.
Where we didn't lower the edge, now we have to.
Flatform again, getting it strong enough to take the force.
OK.
So one series down, we've reduced the thickness by probably a quarter of an inch.
Now we're coming to do the same thing down the other side.
We're still in the early stages of thinning this down, so we're taking off some pretty aggressive flakes.
The steps are the same as in the preforming, except a little more care in the platform preparation and the support.
We'll try and clean up this one little edge.
You notice we're not necessarily really worried about the shape in this early stage.
We're just trying to thin the piece down, and we will start thinking about the shape, obviously trying to keep as much length as we can.
Right at the edge where you want to prepare that platform.
OK.
We may come over here now to make it a little bit more symmetrical. We'll take a little bit more off this other side.
I'm taking just little steep shear flakes to set up the platform to be able to take little longer ones off.
Now we're going to take little steep ones again, set up the platform to go the other direction.
Get that platform strong enough to support however hard you want to hit it.
And make sure that it's below the center line.
You can see the piece is thinning down, still a little thick to the tip.
We'll prepare our platform a little better.
And take some off that side.
We'll take a little bit off that side. We'll prepare that platform right there.
OK.
We are getting more concerned with our shape.
And how straight it is.
Still a little thick here.
Little shear flakes.
Braided.
The platform may not be quite isolated enough. I will come from the tip and work on isolating that platform just a little more.
First one.
OK. There's the next one.
Come from the other side. Little shear work.
Braided.
Now we're getting thin enough that to keep striking this way without really good support is going to break the piece in two.
We're down to the thickest spot here, maybe a half inch, but we're still probably close to three inches wide.
We'll do a few more close ups. Just hold it upright.
We are now going to do a percussion piece with a soft hammer stone.
We already have a basic preformed piece out. Just a large flake with kind of the rough edges knocked off of it.
Still pretty thick, probably an inch thick. And what we want to do is reduce it down now with a hammer stone.
Techniques are pretty much the same. Support and how you hold it is a little bit different.
We're going to now hold it in our hand and we're going to do all of our trim work right in our hand.
And prepare our platform. Then we abrade it. Use your hammer stone or you can use your other stone.
And then you support it well with your fingers. Instead of pressing it on your leg like I was supporting with the leg with the other,
we're going to use our fingers and support it well with our fingers. And take the flakes off.
Now, the idea is when we're striking this, is when I'm striking, I'm striking this way and carrying on through.
I'm not hammering it, I'm striking it on through. So once you prepare your platform,
then you hit it with not the end, but kind of the working face right here.
And you strike it at below that direction and you get the big controlled thinning flakes off.
Now, what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and prepare our platform always below the center line.
If we create a platform then to the other side that's below the center line, then we can take them off the other direction.
Always making sure your platforms are braided strong enough to take the force that you want to apply to it.
Striking it on that platform below the center line.
Little shear flakes build up your platform.
Always get that platform prepared.
A little bit different technique than the antler, but it will work just as well.
In some cases, because of the extra support that you give it, you actually have a little bit more control.
In fact, for the thinner pieces that I make, this is the technique that I use.
This is all supported in the hand.
Now, when I hit strike close to the end to prevent the piece from breaking from in shock,
since I'm working right here at this end, I always support it against my leg as well.
So the piece is against my leg.
So when I strike it, you won't have the shock wave as it goes through the piece from striking it close to the end.
When it gets to here, a lot of times where your fingers do not support it, it will snap off and just fall down.
So if you just support it against your leg, push it into your leg a little bit, you can eliminate that in shock.
Always setting up our platforms so that we can come down ridges.
There again, hitting close to the end, supporting it into my leg, following down ridges.
Oops.
Notice it fell out of my hand.
That's because I hold it loosely in my hand because I want it to kind of turn or roll as it actually hits the surface.
Taking out the next ridge.
Starting.
Okay, now we've bifaced this whole piece down that was an inch thick to start with to three-eighths or less thick.
But we haven't reduced the hole over all size by too much.
A little on the width, more on the width than the length.
And that's all been with just a hammer stone.
Okay, the first pieces on the upper left-hand side are split leg bones out of a cow actually.
Indians would have used deer or elk or buffalo, whatever they had available.
And they can just be split and sharpened into pretty much any shape that you want.
Next to that, we have two antler tines.
The antler tines, if you notice, are cut at a slight angle at the working edge.
And that's because they're always harder to the outer edge.
And so you always file to one side when you're sharpening them to keep that harder outer edge as you're working surface.
Next to that, we use what most modern nappers are using now, and that is copper.
And it's just inside of a wood handle.
We have a copper rod that's hammered down to a square point.
We have two different sizes, one for obviously heavier work and then one for finer work, like for notching or for really delicate serrated edges.
Then we even have another little copper that's even smaller for real delicate notches.
And especially like in the Mayan eccentric work, I use that.
The little leather pad is also of importance because that is what you protect your hand with so that the chips that you're removing don't actually cut your hand.
You don't have to have anything fancy.
It just needs to be a leather that you're going to...I wear them out pretty fast, so I'm not particular about any shape that I make them.
Then we have our same two abraders that we needed for percussion.
And then we have some finer ones so that as you get more delicate, you can be a little bit more critical on where you're actually abrading.
And then we have the little rasp or a file to keep either the antler tools or the copper tools sharpened down to a point to however sharp you want it.
We're getting ready to go to pressure flaking a bi-faced piece that's been all done with antler percussion.
And the first step is preparing your tools, making sure that your tools are sharp enough to do the pressure flaking that you're wanting to do.
We have a, in this case, a copper pressure flaker.
It's a 3-8th rod, and we hammer it down to a point.
And then we keep it sharp by hammering it down to a point.
I normally just use a couple of hammers, a bigger one and a smaller one, just putting the point down and just hammering it.
In this case, this is all the sharper that we need because we're going to be doing some fairly heavy work.
You could use a file and sharpen it down with a file, but then you just lose all that material.
If you take it dull, hammer it down to a point like this.
Then, when you use your file, you only just take off a touch, and you've saved all of your material.
If you just file it down sharp each time, all those filings just drop onto the ground and you never get to use them.
Now we're going to use a piece that was percussioned out to the basic shape that we want.
Now, some pieces are completely percussioned and are quite thin.
If you're going to do pressure flaking, they want to be a little bit thicker because you want them to have a curve.
It has a curve on both sides so that the flakes will be able to travel that curve,
and they will be able to travel farther over a curved surface than they can over a flat surface.
The first step that we do is we actually take the piece and we shear it.
So it's got an edge already around it, we go ahead and shear the edge to get the line that we've already created to one face or the other.
Now I've abraded this and sheared it already for the first sequence, and then we will do the second sequence.
You'll actually see the shearing step.
I've sheared it and abraded it so that you can see just how heavy the edge still is and how uneven it is.
The idea is to make this whole piece smoother and smoother with each pass of pressure flaking.
It's still got a small hinge-type fracture here, and the rest is pretty smooth,
but at this point we don't have to worry about those as we pressure flake, we will take those right off.
Now pressure flaking, you have a leather pad.
You can make them as fancy as you want. You can put thumb holes in them so you can stick your thumb through.
I just use a square leather pad to protect my hand, and then I put the piece into my hand like this,
and then I put this hand down here to lock it in so that I'm not using just my wrist power to hold it.
I'm using the inside of my leg.
My pressure flaker then is held here, and I tuck my whole arm in,
and I apply pressure to the platform in and pressing in like this, and then I snap in an outward fashion.
Now wherever there are little higher areas, better defined ridges, I'm going to try and take more off.
Wherever there's lower areas, I'll take just a little off, but the idea is to make this a thinner edge
and a straighter edge as well as the whole surface.
The first pass, I may not necessarily be trying to get those flakes to travel all the way in.
I'm just trying to even the whole edge up, straighten it up as much as we can.
So I normally always start at the thumb end.
In other words, I start the flakes from this end and come toward me, and then I roll it over, and I will do the same thing,
always taking my flakes off in a series, because then the flakes, as the flakes come off the inside toward my hand,
they will peel off and it's less likely to start a row of little step or hinge fractures.
If you start here and push in, you're going into the mass of the material, and they'll stop and normally break off,
and then it sets up a whole line, and a lot of times you'll get a whole line then or a whole row of little hinge fractures
where the flakes didn't travel all the way.
So if you start at the thumb end and work toward you, you're less likely to do that.
I'm not saying it won't happen, you're just less likely to do it.
This is setting up for a directional pattern.
When we're done, all of our flake lines are going to go in a direction this way.
We start with that right from the very start.
I don't skip around, I don't take one off here and one off here and hit all the low spots.
I actually start here and take a whole pattern off, heavier ones and lighter ones, but always in a whole row, straight down.
Now that's what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and take off a series.
The idea is to use your legs as much as you can, otherwise your wrists and your hands and that really get worn out.
So when I put it in here, I put my pressure flaker onto the platform, I push this hand in,
and then as I come and apply pressure onto the platform, I squeeze my legs together,
squeeze my legs together and use the muscles in my legs to drive the flakes.
So we'll take one off.
The first one travels in about this far and then it sets up a ridge to follow.
Now we'll take off a couple of them.
That one is a little longer, that one goes to there, and then it sets up the ridge for the next flake to follow.
If you look real close right here, you'll note that here is the platform and there is a little divot area from the direction of the cone
and then the center of the ridge works this way, so it's kind of like an almost a little L shape.
If you apply pressure right to this little area here, you're just going to break off this one little piece.
So when you set your pressure flaker, set it far enough back that you're in line with your ridge this direction.
So we're going to take those flakes and actually leave a space back about this far and so that we're in line with that ridge.
Otherwise, you just take a little piece off and you set up a little step fracture there.
So we'll put the pressure flaker back a ways, not right at the edge, but back a ways.
So we're in line with the ridge and take the next one off.
That sets up the next flake exactly the same.
Pressure flake clear to here.
Another one. You can go right down the line.
Now, get into a little lower area. I'm not going to try and push those flakes quite as far in.
Now we're getting into more of a ridged area. I will try and push them farther in.
I can't tell you how many pounds of pressure in that to build up before you snap off,
but you basically can build the pressure up with your hands and your legs and then snap it off to take off big pressure flakes.
See this pressure flake is probably a half inch wide.
And travels at least to here, but it sets up the next ridge for you to be able to take off.
Now, if the piece is too flat, your flakes will expand real wide.
And in a minute we will do a demonstration that will demonstrate that.
We're going to go right down this whole edge.
Once we've gone down the edge, we've eliminated pretty much all of the percussion marks about to the midpoint.
Some are a little longer, some are a little shorter, but pretty much to the midpoint.
As we get closer to the tip, the flakes, I move them steeper and steeper this way so they don't travel over and break out the other side.
The flakes actually travel more down this piece, this direction.
Now, after we've worked the one side, I would normally roll the piece over and work the other side the same.
But in this instance, to show the shearing, what we're going to do is we've worked this face, the next one we're going to work is this face.
You put this face up.
And here's where the squared edge pressure flaker really comes in handy. Instead of taking a round piece and filing it to a point,
the square edge does the shearing very much easier and nicer than a rounded edge.
And the shearing technique is, after we've taken one series off, then we shear it.
And we actually just go along and just shear a lot of the sharp edge off.
At the same time, when we're shearing it, we're looking at making our piece more and more symmetrical.
The shearing actually takes and moves our platform to the other face so that we can work, or below the center line, so that we can work the other face.
Now, after we've sheared it, then we abrade it.
Now, when we abrade it, we don't abrade it at 90 degrees like this.
We abrade it at an angle like this, giving the bevel that we need for our platform.
So now we'll abrade it.
In these early stages, you have to have a heavy enough platform to take off some pretty heavy flakes.
If your platform isn't heavy enough, then it's just going to crush, and you'll wind up with a whole series of little step fractures.
Get your platform heavy enough.
Then we'll do the same thing, the next sequence, right down the sides.
I have that little step fracture here.
It's going to have to come off from the other side, so in this case, I'm just going to take a little flakes off.
I don't want to make the step fracture any worse, but I'd still want to move my line up.
Once we get past it, then we'll take off bigger flakes.
Trying to take off flakes that go to the middle if we can.
Spacing is real critical. Get back far enough that you're in line with the ridge.
These pressure flakes are running that one ran clear over to this other side.
It had a good ridge to follow.
You can see how much each pressure flake is actually coming off.
They're pretty wide, very long.
Clear it over to this side.
It's able to do that because of the curvature of the piece.
And the step and up platform.
My pressure flicker is pretty sharp.
You can see it's kind of mushrooming out.
It's starting to dull down.
After we get done with this pass, we'll just lightly hit it with a file and just remove just a little bit.
If your pressure flicker is too fat and too dull,
then basically you aren't able to put as many pounds per square inch pressure onto your platform.
If it's wider, then you're trying to take off a bigger pot bite at a time.
It takes more pressure to release the flake.
So you want those, I want my pressure flicker to be relatively sharp.
Okay, now we've done each side on this face or on this piece.
You can see that what we've got now is in a lot of places just almost a razor edge.
It's very, very sharp.
Still a few traces of platform left.
That's only after one pass.
Compare it with the other side.
You can still see how much thicker the whole piece is
and how jagged the line is here because we haven't taken any flakes off.
Now we'll do one pass down each face on this other side,
and it'll give us the general shape that we need of the whole piece here.
Now one thing that most people want to do, the tendency,
is if you have a step fracture or a hinge fracture or any kind of problem,
they want to address that problem right away.
But I've kind of ignored those problems.
This problem here and this problem here.
And the reason is because a lot of times if you ignore them,
you don't make them worse, and then they'll go away.
And I'll show you what I mean.
We've just did this face now.
Now we want to roll it over and work on this face.
When we shear this piece,
we've pretty much eliminated most of that step fracture.
That step fracture's only got one little spot right there still left.
So now we'll abrade it,
and we will come down this face.
Because there is still some of that step fracture right there,
we are now going to pass over it and skip to where our next best platform is.
That would almost totally eliminate that step fracture.
There's almost nothing there.
By the time we're sure to work the other face again, it'll be gone.
Now as we come down, all of our flakes,
this whole piece is getting smoother and smoother.
And pay particular attention to like where this old step fracture is,
because as we diagonal into it, we should be able to eliminate that,
provided our platform is strong enough.
And if you get down to a certain section,
it's not the platform, it's not the way you want it,
so be sure and just prepare it a little bit more so that it is.
Notice the flake pattern direction.
I'm not going straight across.
I'm angling them in.
I'm trying to set up my pattern for the subsequent number of passes
because I want to go over this piece.
Our fracture is still there, but not much of it.
Got one more flake here at the tip.
Pretty much gone.
Now we have made just one pass down each side.
As the piece becomes more and more refined,
the sequence is exactly the same.
You just look at your edge, and now as you look at these edges here,
you may want to what we call center the line first.
In other words, this line may wave up and down.
There may be little overhangs, little dips.
And so what we do is we straighten the edge.
In this case, I'll drop down to a smaller pressure flaker,
and we straighten this whole edge.
So we're going to take some flakes, little flakes off one way.
We're not trying to take big flakes off.
We're just centering that line and getting the line
so that it's right in the middle.
Now the closer you get to a finished piece,
the more attention that you want to pay to that
if you're trying to set up a nice pattern.
I'm taking some flakes off.
I'm hooking the pressure flaker underneath and flipping up,
and some of them I'm taking down.
Because I'm working on straightening that edge.
Now I'll go down this way part way.
And if you look at it this way, you can see the difference.
This is becoming much more even.
This is much more uneven.
It's also the same way here.
It's much straighter here than it is here.
That's what we're trying to do is keep it so that this bevel,
this direction and this direction, becomes very consistent.
We're trying to put that as close to the center line
of the piece as we can.
Now it's still going to be a fairly heavy platform
because we're still kind of in the early stages of preparing this.
Now if we do have an opportunity to take off a little bigger flake
where we need to, we will as we're going along with our picking.
But in most cases, you're just kind of picking the edge.
Getting rid of that real sharp edge and centering the line.
Okay, once we have centered our line and made it a little more even,
then we decide which face that we want to work on.
I normally work from the base to the tip, the base to the tip,
and then I roll it over and work the tip to the base and the tip to the base.
So in this case, we'll put it with the base away from us.
We will shear.
We're not shearing off a lot, just a little bit.
We're just preparing our platform.
Here's where we kind of even the whole piece up,
shearing maybe a little more or a little less off
to make the whole contour on the edge, whatever you want it to be,
a little bit straighter.
After we shear it, then we abrade it.
Always making sure to abrade it at a slight angle.
A platform isn't near as heavy as the first time.
It's much straighter than before.
It's almost a platform from one end to the other.
Each sequence that goes through is going to get smoother and smoother and smoother.
Then we just take off another series.
Now, done is relative to whatever the ability of the maker has.
In this case, we've only made a couple of passes on it,
but the whole sequence is just repeated and repeated
until you get it to the final shape and size that you want.
Each shearing will get each course around.
Every platform will get lighter and lighter,
so that you can take your flicks off in a more controlled fashion.
Now we are going to proceed on with notching.
After you've finished your point, then it is,
and get to the shape that you want it, then we come to the notching.
The notching, there are two types of notches.
We have what I would call an open notch,
and that's what we were going to start with.
To proceed with an open notch, in this case we're going to do a base notch.
We're going to take off one flake, little set-up flake.
We're just shearing the edge with the tip.
We set up just a little platform, just with the tip,
and then we roll it over, and we take off one flake.
After we've removed this flake, we've pushed it up in as far as we can
to thin it out into the direction of the notch, as far as we possibly can.
Now then we roll it over, and we shear it right in that notch.
Shear it and abrading, just with the tip.
Once we get it abraded, the platform is strong enough,
then we push off another flake in the same direction on the other side,
taking it up in as far as we can, thinning it out.
Then we just, using our notcher, our pressure flaker,
we just shear and abrade at the same time, roll over,
take off one more.
Just keep taking off one flake after another in the same spot.
That's how you get your notch to travel.
Now, by an open notch, it's open because the opening here is wider than the base,
and as you go deeper and your pressure flaker gets farther and farther into your notch,
you may want to widen that notch because your pressure flaker will start hitting on these sides.
Once it starts hitting on the sides, or getting real close to hitting on the sides,
then you're liable to break it out.
So as we go deeper and deeper in, we may have to widen this opening.
Now, most of the time, you try and take off two nice-sized flakes to keep it plenty wide.
So we're going to do, go straight in as far as we can.
At this point, you can see that the notcher is getting real close to hitting at these corners.
So we just can widen this out a little bit.
And make sure that we don't hit at those corners.
Now, doing this, we can go in as far as we want.
The only limit being the width of this opening versus your pressure flaker.
Now, you can make your pressure flaker to look more like a screwdriver, narrower,
and you can get it to run in farther this way.
Or you just have to keep widening this up.
Now, this is a different style of notch.
We're going to go ahead and do on this same piece, is going to be an expanded notch.
Now, in an expanded notch, what you've got is you've got a narrower opening,
and then it widens out into a bigger opening.
Now, I'm going to go ahead and notch this one that way, probably on the same side.
We're going to come up here, and we're going to set up our platform.
Same way, we'll just do a little notch, a little spot, and we take off one flake.
We shear and abrate, pushing that flake as far up in there as we can to thin it way out.
Get that platform strong enough, do the same thing on the other side, and then we shear and abrate.
In this case, I'm going to drop down to a little bit smaller pressure flaker
because I want to keep that opening as small as I can.
But I'm still going to go just straight in.
One flake, same as what we just did on the previous notch, shearing and abrating with the tip
until we can't hardly go any farther in without widening the notch.
Then this is where we change.
In this case, then, what we're going to do is we're going to use the tip of the pressure flaker
right on the edge of the tip, and we're going to press straight down and then roll forward.
And push at the same time, so roll and push.
Now, what you always need to do is on both notches, what you make sure is your platform,
when you're shearing and abrating it, is that you're getting it below the center line,
just like you did when you were doing the pressure flake.
In this case, once we get our platform set, we'll put our pressure flaker right in there
on the platform, push straight down and roll forward.
You should hear a good, clean, distinct click.
Well, kind of crunched that one.
Kind of crunched that one, too.
The flakes went off, but it didn't click the way I wanted it to.
Let's try another one here.
Okay, now we've got the platform set up to do one to the other side.
So now we're going to press down and in.
There's one, and there's two.
Now, the advantage to this is, since your pressure flaker isn't coming in from the side,
but through here, you can go any direction that you want.
And you can start widening the opening up.
There's one, and there's another one.
And we shear it just with the side of our tool now, and abrate it.
Build that platform up.
Take off another one.
All right, at this point, we just keep widening it out
and widening it out.
You can see it's getting considerably bigger than the opening.
We just take it in a series, prepare your platform,
and take it in a series, just like you do on the outside edge.
Once you get the notch pretty much the way you like it,
get it a little more symmetrical here.
And then you can come in from underneath
and start taking flex from underneath.
And literally come in and eat the whole center out,
if that's what you want it to do.
We're not going to finish this piece,
but we're going to go ahead and switch over to some finished pieces
that I have made while we still have a few minutes left.
But I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for watching my video.
Thank you.