Anybody knap without copper?

[coyote pup]

Is there anybody out there who knaps with antler or rock only and makes nice points? If so, what all do you use for your tools?

[billy]

That's all I use, except for elaborate notching, then I'll use copper or horseshoe nails.  But other than that, I'm 99% antler and hammerstones.  I make some decent points I guess.....at least they are sharp enough for hunting. 

[aaron]

i use antler, bone and stone for most of my work (occasionally resorting to a copper punch in a pinch). most of my work is percussion on obsidian- larger stuff ususlly over 6 inches. pictures of my tools can be found in the recent thread called "deer?elk? got salmon". my main tool is a "medium sized" moose billet (6 inches long by 1 1/2 dia) .

[coyote pup]

Billy, I think I recall seing some of your points recently and you are where I only wish I could get. You make some fine points.

What all tools do you use? I'm trying to figure out what tools I need to get, and I want to use stone and antler only.

[billy]

Thanks coyote!

I usually make small arrow points since that is what I use the most, so I use small and medium-sized billets mostly...  I also use antler tine pressure flakers a lot, but they wear down and need occasional sharpening.  A small or medium sized deer antler will give you enough for a billet and several pressure flakers.  Add a few small hammer stones for abrading and rough percussion and you're set.  You can get away with a surprisingly small toolkit unless you get into breaking up large nodules and cobbles, then you need bigger tools.   But I usually collect all the big flakes that people throw away and make my points out of those because they've already done most of the work for me.

I have some instructional videos that I've posted on youtube....you can watch them and hopefully they will help you.  Just search "primitivepathways" (no space) in youtube and you'll find me! 

[Michael C.]

Hahaha!!! "Dang baby, where's my pork chop sandwich?" I almost threw up I was laughing so hard.

[Hillbilly]

I don't use any copper except for pressure flaking at times. I really prefer antler, stone, or wood for percussion. My tool kit consists of large, medium and small antler billets (moose and whitetail,) a selection of soft, gritty hammerstones (you don't want hard ones, just don't work well for percussion,) big hardwood billets made of dogwood, persimmon, or live oak for working rough rock like quartzite and rhyolite, and an abrader or two. For abo pressure flaking, tines work, but a tine set into a longer handle works much better.

[ricktrojanowski]

I'm a beginner but I made the switch early from copper to antler and wood.  It was the best thing I did.  All I made with copper was rubble, antler is much more forgiving, but for pressure I'm still using copper.  Any time I see an antler for free or cheap pick it up and just mess around and see what works.  I have a couple of moose billets for bigger work and some large whiteail billets for medium work.  Then for finer work I have a chalky smaller whitetail billet.  Also a dogwood billet for quartz.  I'm trying to learn to get better with the hammer stones.

[nugget]

I have used both copper and natural material. When I get in a mood I resort to copper. Iam trying to make the switch to all natural material for tools.

[VenomBOWslinger]

I like to keep it simple U can make all ur own tools...deer antler works nails work u can use a copper nail cut off the head and pound it into a chainsaw file handle or a stick..
Cheers!!

[HoBow]

Hillbilly- Does live oak work better than southern oak or water oak or do they all work more or less the same?  We have so many different types of oak, I get them confused...the live oak that most talk about, if I'm not mistaken, is what we call a southern live oak.  Also, if I wanted to make a billet out of a live oak, does the wood need to be well seasoned or can it be green? 

[Hardawaypoints]

Any wood billet needs to be seasoned. Wet wood will  be chewed up by rock, espectially the tough stuff.

I started knapping all abo, but got corrupted by copper.  I sometime switch back to stone, bone, & wood just to do it.  Copper doesn't do as well as antler & wood with harder rock types like Rhyolite, Quartzite, and raw Pedernales.

Jim

[Hillbilly]

Jeff, live oak is a lot different from the other oaks, much denser and more impact-resistant. It's the semi-evergreen one that lives near the coast in the deep south. Most of the other oaks aren't too good for billets. I've tried a bit of everything, and dogwood, persimmon, live oak, and boxwood are about the only woods worth fooling with for billets, really. Even osage doesn't work worth a crap.

[HoBow]

I live on the Alabama coastline- so we have plenty