Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Flintknapping => Topic started by: Zuma on March 15, 2018, 09:22:45 pm
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First go to a jetty and bust off some black chert.
Most likely Dover chert lenses in the rip rap.
The limestone should have coral fossils'
The method show up in the photos to follow.
Zuma
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Now do your best ---
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Keep going till you have a Morrow Mt.
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I know the feeling.
WA
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So help me learn here, if you wanted to, in that image with the break, you could put a tool on that hinge, and remove that peak, and knock out a nice flute? Probably using an ishi stick?
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I tried to obliterate that @#$!& Knot from " any which way but loose" (Eastwood movie).
I guess I just don't knap any better than the Morrow Mt people.
Zuma
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Did you try telling clyde to make a right turn?
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Oh sugar, I forgot. Perhaps if the Mt folks had------ the projectile evolution
would have stopped with notched points. :-K :-K )P( :o
Zuma
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When I have punched a stack or step off, it has almost always created a hole/dip immediately on the other side of the stack or step or broke the piece in halves.
I think you did a nice job of saving it.
WA
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I have a Morrow Mt collection to Zuma. Just didn't know what to call it til now.lol
Bjrogg
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Yep Chip that little knot just wouldn't budge. :-K
I usually clear them with ease. :OK
Thanks for the sympathy :D
Let's see um BJ 8)
Zuma
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Zuma,
Good for you tearing that base off to get that knot out. The old timers would tolerate them in the middle of the blade, but not in the base where they would mess up hafting. They would have done it just like you did.
Those knots are super common and super annoying in the Virginia quartzite I mostly knap. Most of the time you don't know they are there until you start sending flakes in and they won't go. Its like this little middle finger comes up out of the stone. As Chippinstuff says, the only way to get them (if they are small enough) is to send in a flake with enough energy to dive under the knot and scoop it out, leaving a pock mark or divot in the biface. And as he he mentions, sometimes the energy wave dives under the knot and keeps going all the way through the piece, snapping it. At least with brittle quartzite, more commonly the bending stress put on the thinner portions of the biface around the knot can't handle the stress load and the biface snaps.
Any way, I guess i'ts like all defects in the rock that turn up late in the process. You have to learn to pick your battles. When it's in the base like that, though, it's got to be blasted out!
Keith
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Zuma,
Its like this little middle finger comes up out of the stone. ;D ;D )P(
--- is to send in a flake with enough energy to dive under the knot and scoop it out, leaving a pock mark or divot in the biface.
Keith
Great explanation Keith.
I look for divits on big blades I think someone has faked. Also replacing a hinged flake often can create the pock mark. Something caused the evolution of notches to stems. Perhaps the alatl where points were projected and not stabbed into prey. )P( (SH)
Zuma