Something about the long, hot days of summer makes me lazy and I don't do much knapping. In the past couple of weeks though, I have lucked into several really nice pieces of quartzite. I have had a run of pieces that thinned down to 5:1 or a bit thinner which is very rare. Generally speaking the quartzite here is very reluctant to go much past 4:1. I have found with this stuff it is 30% what I do with it and 70% the inherent properties of the stone. Each of these was done with dogwood hammers direct percussion to final thickness, then edge work and bases punched in with a deer tine lashed to an old bow stave (i.e. horizontal/shaft punch).
First up a big, broad Savannah River. This grade of the material is very hard, but fairly clean (defect free) and less "snappy" than most so once you learn to really hit hard and drive the flakes it knaps well. It is very sharp and very tough, if I ever had to actually use a quartzite knife I would want one of this type of material:
This blue and brown material is very cool. The blue is a dream, flakes well and not at all snappy. The brown is a bit more problematic, as you can read in the flake scars. At 7.3 mm thick, this is a very thin point for the material. Part of the reason is the material itself, part is seen on the "B" side, showing how the piece started dead flat on one side. Just about every really thin quartzite artifact I have seen was done this way. All of the flakes on the B side are punch flakes.
Very rare around here to find glassy, semi-translucent quartzite. It flakes very well, almost getting close to Talahatta or Hixton. I have several small spalls from one cobble:
Keith
