Ben,
So I'll tell you the brief history of eastern quartzite knapping, as i know it. A few decades ago some academic knappers/archaeologists who were good flint knappers were trying to figure out quartzite knapping based on what they were seeing in the artifacts and work sites in Virginia and New Jersey. They could see that the overall model was the same as with other lithic resources, where fairly large, fairly thin, flat bifaces were being produced at the rock sources, but they couldn't consistently match the results. Hammer stones were fine for spalling and some early work but absolutely sucked beyond that. Antler worked somewhat, some of the time, but that elevator clearly wasn't going all the way to the top. Probably based on the earlier work in Europe with boxwood billets, someone decided to try hitting the quartzite with wood. It worked. For reasons I don't understand, wood it able to consistently drive the long thinning flakes across a piece of average eastern quartzite in a way that other materials can't, to produce flat, relatively thin bifaces.
Now if I am understanding your thought process correctly, you would say that since no white men ever saw any Native Americans using wood percussion knapping tools, and since no such tools have been found by archaeologists, that method of knapping quartzite is invalid, wasn't used, isn't "abo". Is that correct?
So fast forward to a few years ago and a knapper in the Blue Ridge Mountains was looking at quartzite artifacts and work sites and trying to figure out how the hell they worked this stuff. He finds the old research, because it was made public, and tries it. It works. He puts the idea on Paleo Planet and the thread explodes, going to over 20 pages, with at least another 20 on side topics relating to quartzite knapping. So a few years later and guys up and down the east coast are working quartzite with wood and getting the same results. But no white guys ever wrote down that that is the Indian way, and where are the tools, so sorry guys, wrong, not "abo"?
So the knapper mentioned above is Pete Davis. I feel I owe a real debt to Pete. I mean if he called me up right now and said he needed help hiding a body I would actually give serious consideration to saying yes, and I'm a real Boy Scout (literally). See the thing is, I got into knapping after a neighbor showed me an "arrow head" he found. It was made of quartzite and I was determined to figure out how it could of been made. I got pretty far at figuring out knapping in general, but quartzite knapping still evaded me. So Pete putting that information out there and getting the dialogue going helped me find that "holy grail" of knapping I was looking for.
So you mentioned fluting with your method. As soon as I saw the results you were getting, I was already thinking about it's application to fluting. When you mentioned that the technique involves pulling instead of pushing the flake off, it immediately struck a chord with me because I have been thinking along the same lines but can't figure out how to do it. I'm stumbling around a dark room bumping into stuff. Can you help with the light switch?
Keith