Week Seven - No Title

This blog is going to be presented a little differently from other blogs.  In order to tell what happened this week in the best way, I will be presenting this blog in a more chronological format in order to preserve continuity.  I don't really have anything special this week to talk about so I will be adding in a few graphics.  However, I might talk about my arrowheads for way longer than I normally do.  Also, here's the link to my website.

First off, I want to show this guy to you as I meant to during my second blog.  This is a large piece of blue glass my father has that displays a beautiful conchoidal fracture.  I tried to angle it so you can see the massive ridges shimmering in the light.  I can't help but think it is like a giant clam shell!

This was the piece of opalescent glass, which I accidentally called iridescent in my last blog.  As you can see in the two photos, it changes color when put up to the light, emitting an almost fiery and ethereal glow.  Overall, the glass wasn't too difficult to work, and I removed all of the matte finish except for a really small and unnoticeable spot on the back.  Part of the reason for the shape was because I kept working away at the curved section of the arrowhead in order to remove all of the flat sections.  All that material I kept removing in order to try to drive the flakes across the face of the material led to the indent you see above.  It all worked out in the end, though.  The only really bad thing that happened to it was that a bite was taken out from the upper portion, requiring some reduction to pretty it up.

This was the candy-striped fiberglass I mentioned last week.  Fiberglass is composed of many little glass fibers that are combined together, which you can see in the graphic.  As such, light can pass through the ends of the glass fibers, which is why you can see light through the piece of glass on the right.  I asked my father if the glass fibers affect flintknapping in any way, and he said that the fibers are so closely packed that the force is transferred through the material like normal.  In other words, it behaves like regular glass when it comes to pressure flaking.  Pressure flaking parallel to the fibers, or on the ends, was easier than flaking perpendicular to the fibers, or on the sides.

I had two pieces of the candy glass to use, but one was quite a bit thinner than the other.  I chose the thinner piece as it looked nicer.  I assume the pieces were cut from one large block, and that would explain why the one fiberglass slab was a bit less clean.  You can sort of see in the above photo with the light shining through how the different colors are not neatly arranged.  This face of the glass also had a shiny finish where the other faces were matte.  I decided the arrowhead would look better if the stripes were even on each side and not drooping towards one end.

Anyhow, I sort of knew it was going to snap in half eventually, and it did.  I got the small arrowhead on the left as a result.  That arrowhead turned out nice, though.  All of the flat sections were removed.  Unfortunately, I had to remove the orange stripes in order to reduce the piece correctly.  The other part turned out fine, as well.  However, there is a large flat section on the back I didn't dare try to remove.  The piece was already so thin, and I had a good side to show to the camera.  Although it is hard to see, it is notched.  I tried to show off the sheen to the camera, but it kind of made the image too warm looking.

I got some neat confetti from the fiberglass flakes.  I think I am going to toss them about during my TED Talk, so wear goggles.

Here's what you all are here for, the spear point!  The left piece is about two inches wide and six inches long, and I got an arrowhead barely the size of a digit out of it!

Here's what I really got from it, though it is not much better, at least in my mind.  Personally, I hated this entire arrowhead.  It looks good and is probably one of my best, but there were major problems with it.  First off, it was extremely tough to work.  I heard that obsidian was easy to work because it was similar to glass, but most of the time, I was completely unable to get a flake to form.  It was just about as hard as the agates, but the flakes I did get were at least of a reasonable size.

Furthermore, many of the flakes had a deep bulb.  This is the spot where the conchoidal fracture originates.  These deep bulbs made the edge incredibly thin.  As a result, the edge would snap off like in the graphic above, leaving me with a thick and rounded edge that could not be worked on.  I decided that I was not going to be able to get enough force with the pressure flakers, so I tried out the copper mallets.  They, unfortunately, broke off a chunk of the obsidian slab more often than they fixed the edge, so I got a bunch of shards and one long piece that cleanly tore off the unworkable edge.  I managed to use one of these shards to make the small thing above, but the others were too small to be used.  Also, I got the worst hinge fracture ever while using the pressure flaker.  Perhaps it was not a hinge fracture as you are not supposed to get those with pressure flakers, but it, nonetheless, was horrific.  It extended deep through the arrowhead and down past the imaginary center line of the arrowhead.  When I tried to remove it, the piece containing the hinge snapped off.  I guess it saved me from having to deal with it.  Unfortunately, by the time I had got the edge to a point in which it was workable, the slab was about half the size it should be.

Once it was at this size, it wasn't too hard to work.  The thickness was uneven, though.  The thicker edge is hard to work, so good flakes are hard to remove, meaning that that edge will be thicker.  It was probably one of my sharper arrowheads, but I couldn't cut myself with it even if I tried.  Mainly, I was just disappointed with how it turned out because this wasn't some junky piece of glass my father had lying around; he paid for these obsidian slabs.  I should have slowed down while making it.  I even considered just stopping and letting my father finish the arrowhead while I make an arrowhead from something else.

Had I had more time to work on this, I would have taken longer to finish it, but I wanted to get it done so I could start on and complete my blog.  Normally, I make the arrowheads throughout the week and then type my blog up on the weekends.  This meant that I sometimes had arrowheads I made one week but don't mention in the blog for that week.  I found this schedule to be better for me than starting everything on Friday.  Since I didn't have much time throughout last week or the weekend to work on these, I tried rushing the obsidian and got frustrated with how it was going.  That is probably why it turned out the way it did.

I wanted to make a spear point, so I asked my father if he had any more of that refrigerator glass I used in a previous week.  I failed to make a spear point then, but perhaps I was now skilled enough to do so.  I started flaking around the edge, then the tip snapped off with barely any pressure applied.  I continued working at it as the piece was still a good size, but it snapped again.  Finally, one of the edges of the resulting glass slab was impossible to work as it was too strong as a result of its geometry.  I took the copper mallet and smashed it off.  The piece was much smaller as a result of all this snapping, most of which wasn't on purpose.  I went for this shape as I remember seeing an arrowhead somewhat similar to it in the Overstreet Price Guide.

At first, I thought I was lucky with how the glass broke as all the other shards were of a reasonable and workable size.  However, one of the shards broke in half again, and the other had edges that were at undesirable angles.  

I was done with my arrowheads for this week at this point, so I took them all together to line up.  Now, this is why the format is slightly different.  I usually show all my arrowheads together and then dive into each one.  I took photos of all the arrowheads made before the refrigerator glass individually so I could start talking about them in my blog despite not being entirely finished.  Once the refrigerator glass arrowhead was finished, I took all my arrowheads together so a picture could be taken.  Then ...

... this happened.  See the large obsidian point?  I dropped it on the counter and it broke.  I was so mad.  For three hours of work, I get an arrowhead I am unhappy with and then I break it.  Really, I should have just have left it; the broken aspect would give it character, or something along those lines.  However, I decided to fix it.

Here's the result.  It is about twice as small, and because I couldn't get the flakes to go across the face, it is abnormally thick on the right side.  Truthfully, I consider it garbage and wanted to throw it away.  The final result from the obsidian slab was a mediocre arrowhead barely an inch wide and tall.  I might not even bring it to my TED Talk.

Here's the final arrowhead of the week.  It was made from a piece of mahogany obsidian, hence the wood grain pattern.  Compared to the last arrowhead, it went swimmingly.  It's actually wood, but I bet I got two of the five or so people that read my blogs.

Overall, I have come to enjoy genius hour less towards the end of the project, mainly because I have had other things to work on and it takes somewhere around eight hours a week to do.  I do not think I want to do another project in which I have to make something with my hands.  I have a couple of ideas for the next genius hour.  I thought about doing 3D modeling.  I did a little with AutoCAD in my drafting class, and I enjoyed it.  However, I would have to find a free program to download so I can work on it at home and not just for an hour a week on Thursdays.  Most of my other ideas are kind of crafts related.  There are some other things I would like to do and have wanted to do for a number of years, but they would require a large initial investment, so they are not exactly the best thing to jump right in to.

I wanted to use this week to make some really cool arrowheads as my final send-off.  Although I did do that, the obsidian points were sub par compared to the other arrowheads I made this week and have made in the past weeks.  I may make an arrowhead or two in the next week for my TED Talk, but my failure with the obsidian has kind of made me not want to flintknap for a while.  I don't like ending on a failure, but I should also probably use that time to prepare for my speech.  Anyhow, thanks for reading my blog, I hoped you liked it!

Week Six - I Made a Website!

This week, I tested out the heat-treated agates, repaired my pressure flaker, and made a website!  I was also informed that the links to my pictures have not been working.  I wish I knew this earlier, but I think I fixed it.  Please tell me if the link asks for your permission before viewing the image.

Yes, here's the link to my website.  Please tell me if it does not work.  We learned about Google Sites in my Google Docs and Applications class and I decided to put that knowledge to good use for my blog.  On this website, you'll see definitions of words I have and haven't used, videos from YouTube to show you flintknapping in action, pictures of all my arrowheads neatly ordered, and all of my blogs!  It was quite a bit of work, and I been chipping away at it for the last three weeks.  It is partly why this blog is not as long as I wanted it to be, but this should make up for it.  Please view it!  I was even able to use my failed arrowhead background from a couple weeks ago!  This paragraph won't be on the website as it would be a little awkward reading about the website you are currently on.

The main pressure flaker I use has been getting dull and has gotten quite shorter.  As such, it started to become difficult to use, so much so that I began to use the flattened pressure flaker instead.  Many times, the wooden dowel the copper rod is embedded in would be in the way.  I asked my father how I could fix the pressure flaker, and he said to take a knife and shave down the wood to expose more of the copper rod.  He also got out some files so I could sharpen the flaker.  The one on the left was the dull version, and the one on the right is the sharpened version.  The copper isn't all that durable, so it does wear down over time, especially if you are using it for several hours a week for a couple of months.  Now, it should be much easier to use, and I know how to repair it in the future.

This was my first arrowhead to be made from the heat-treated agates.  The agate on the left was the one used and was about the perfect size.  The agate was extremely hard to work, though.  This was partly due to the shape and edges of the agate, but also simply because the agate was a piece of tough material.  The edges of the agate had a rounded contour.  This is nice if you plan to keep the agate in a collection, but it also made pressure flaking nearly impossible.  Control-click the graphic to see a larger version.

The pressure flaker would slip off the edge.  I could have placed the pressure flaker higher up on the edge, but that would require more pressure and strength.  Eventually, I moved on to the copper mallets to prepare the edge.  I could deliver a more powerful blow with them which manage to flake part of the edge.  The other parts of the agate's edge could not be prepared with the copper mallets, so I tried something new.  I had read that the copper mallets are softer than stone, so I got the idea that maybe using the hammerstones would be able to deliver the blow necessary to remove this rounded edge.  They were slightly harder to use than the mallets, but they did work better.  A weird thing I noticed while using them was that they smelled like gunpowder.  I think that this may be more due to the bags they were stored in rather than the stones themselves smelling like gunpowder.

In the end, the arrowhead turned out okay.  There are few flat sections I was unable to remove, and the tip did break off while working at it.  The edge is clean, though, and the overall appearance is appealing.

After the first agate arrowhead, I tried using the agate circled in the left image.  It slipped my mind to take a before photo, so the left photo is what you get.  You can see how the agate looks really cool and would make a beautiful arrowhead.  I broke off the smaller portion of the L-shape and began working.  Unfortunately, it was as hard as the novaculite from last week.  I tried going at it with the copper mallets, but it only broke the small piece more due to some interior cracks.  Also, the white portion of the agate had very large crystals that wanted to simply crumble away when pushed against.  In the end, I couldn't get anything from that agate, so I was glad I broke it in half so it was not entirely wasted.

My second arrowhead of the week was made from the porcellanite, or non-volcanic glass, I used last week.  I had a few shards leftover, and I kept them in case I could use them.  The piece was more square shaped, so I went with this style of notching in order to do something unique and to not have to reduce the size of the piece too much.  All in all, it turned out rather nice and was much easier to make than the agate arrowhead above.

I forgot to take a picture, but this arrowhead was made from the bottom of a small, white jar.  My dad broke the jar for me to use weeks ago, but I never got around to it.  Working this glass arrowhead was extremely easy.  I had sort of became used to the stone, so I didn't realize how much easier glass is too work.  Popping off the first flakes require about the same amount of pressure, but once the edge has been reduced and worked, the glass has the obvious advantage.  I believe I mentioned in last week's post that the longest flakes can be removed from the unworked edge of the material.  That is, an edge that is at right angles with the face of the piece.  I noticed while working this glass arrowhead that I could remove long flakes even while I finishing up the piece.  In other words, I have become more skilled at flintknapping.  I also have been developing and strengthening the muscles needed, as well.

The arrowhead turned out really nice, but there is one discolored spot in the glass towards the upper left of the arrowhead.  It is sort of clear there, so I think there must have been some inconsistencies in the glass used.  Perhaps the chemicals used to color the glass were not fully mixed in.

Absolute trash is what this agate arrowhead is.  It was made from the agate seen on the left.  This piece of agate was about an inch and a half in diameter.  I tried a bit of flaking on the edge, and it was very difficult.  Because of this, I decided I ought to break the agate in half before I began to work.  After all, my finished arrowhead would be a nice size, but look horrific due to the large flat portions that would remain.  Instead of snapping cleanly, I got a bunch of little slices as the agate fractured radially.  Many of these slices also had cracks within them, so they would snap in the middle of working them. When an arrowhead is extremely small, it is difficult to place the pressure needed to remove a flake because the material will wiggle and flip about.  This meant that the final outcome is not at all clean, is way too thick for its size, and still has the flat sections.

I doubt that we failed the heat-treatment.  Instead, I think that agates are just very hard to work no matter what.  I do not think I will make any more arrowheads from agates as I do not want to waste the beautiful agate slabs my dad has.  Besides, next week is the final week, and there are some very cool pieces of glass I want to make some arrowheads from.

This arrowhead was rather small, and like the other porcellanite arrowhead above, it was made from a small shard I held on to.  This was a shape I have been wanting to make for some time, but I could never get the material to work with me.  The tang on the upper right was damaged, but it turned out fine.

These two arrowheads are a couple my father made, and he decided to take some pictures of them the same way I have.  The left is a piece of obsidian with a bizarre golden sheen.  My father thinks that I might be caused due to the minerals that made the obsidian.  Although it can't be easily seen in the photo, it looks very cool.  That arrowhead was originally part of a spear point he was making that snapped in half.  I mentioned in the previous blog in which I attempted to make a glass spear point.  I hope to be able to make an obsidian spear point next week, but if it breaks in half, I will make two smaller points.  The one on the right is a piece of gray fiberglass, and it has an almost otherworldly effect.  My father has a couple pieces of candy-striped fiberglass for me to use, so they should look beautiful if I can get them to work with me.  It is not pictured, but there is also a piece of iridescent glass I am eyeing.  When held to the light, a fire dances within.  Please be sure to check out my next blog to see how these will go.  Since they are all glass more or less, I will hopefully not have much difficulty working them.

All in all, I am quite disappointed with this week.  I wanted to make some stone arrowheads from a number of different materials, but I failed with the agate.  I think it might be more that the material was too hard and not that I am not skilled enough.  Either way, I also made fewer arrowheads than I wanted to.  Part of this was due to Thanksgiving taking a large chunk of time I could use away and because I had a number of other things to do.  I also made that website, though I mainly worked on it while at my Grandma's when I didn't have access to my flintknapping tools.  Personally, I do not really care for the two-week period we had last week or this week.  I am on schedule, though, and I will move on to some neater pieces for next week's blog.  Be sure to come back next week to see them!

Week Five - Baked and Stoned

I don't want to include this in my blog, but I do want you guys to see it.  It goes with the title.

I ended last week's blog by stating that I would be moving onto stone this week and perform some heat-treating.  I did just that this week and made four stone arrowheads, two glass arrowheads, and returned to an earlier piece.  Sorry if my blog is a little disorganized.  I didn't realize this was a two-week period and had nearly completed my blog when it was brought to my attention.  As such, I had to add some new material from the extra week, and the whole post may read like two weeks were combined.

These are some agates my father has.  They were once my grandfather's, and he used them in jewelry and belt buckles.  The pink stone is novaculite.  These stones can be used as they are for flintknapping, but they would be very hard to work.  What heat-treating does is make the stone easier to work by melting the micro-crystals together into crypto-crystals, which are smaller.  The reason why glass is easy to work is because it is amorphous, or lacks a crystalline structure.  Rocks with a crystalline structure can be used in flintknapping, but it is best to heat-treat the rocks beforehand so the crystals are as fine as possible.

To heat-treat, we buried the agates and novaculite in the sand.  We set the oven to three hundred fifty degrees and baked the stones for eight hours.  After the eight hours, we turned off the oven and let them cool overnight.  I will see and talk about the result of the heat-treating process next week.  We used our oven for heat-treating, but the native peoples would have used the coals of a campfire.

Similar to last week, I made a total of five arrowheads for the first half of the two-week period.  The three dark-gray ones are made of non-volcanic glass.  A more proper name for them, though, is porcellanite, and it forms when coal seams burn and melt the surrounding rock.  If the surrounding rock has the proper composition of quartz and cools correctly, non-volcanic glass forms.  As such, it wasn't too difficult to work with and most of the problems I encountered with the glass were present with the stone.

This was the form of the porcellanite before I started to work it.  My father had purchased stones already cut for flintknapping, so I guess I will still have to deal with those flat sections and driving the flakes across the face.  The pink stones are novaculite.  I, however, didn't use them as they were way too difficult to work, even after heat-treating.  I could not even get a sub-par flake to form on them.

This was the first one of the week.  I started by breaking the above piece of stone in two so I wouldn't waste the whole slab.  It has a rather odd shape because the stone broke badly half way in.  I decided to continue with the piece instead of trashing it and got this.  The stone required a bit more pressure to work, but it was not that much harder than glass.  The arrowhead could be cleaned up a bit, but I didn't want to break it even more.

I used the bottom of the other glass bottle Kaden donated for this arrowhead.  I had some extra time and decided to use it for this.  It isn't really that clean of an arrowhead as I wasn't trying too hard with it.  Otherwise, nothing too eventful occurred with this arrowhead.

The third arrowhead was made from the other half of the porcellanite slab.  The reason it has such a pronounced stem is because I removed a flake that was way too large.  I could have reduced the size of the arrowhead or simply mirror the mistake and use it in the notching.  I choose the latter, and it turned out okay.  I do not like how it is not symmetrical, though.  I feared I could snap it in twain, so the work needed to make it symmetrical was not done.

This was not a new arrowhead but rather an older one I cleaned up.  The picture on the left shows how the arrowhead use to look and the one on the right shows the improved version.  The image quality also improved.  It was my third arrowhead and probably my worst.  A section of the plate was used to make a teardrop-shaped arrowhead, but I was not skilled enough to make anything of value.  I returned to it this week, just like I said I would, and managed to make it look much better.  There are still the large flat sections, but the edge is much more even.

My final arrowhead of the week was this guy.  Most of the same problems occur over and over again, so it is kind of getting harder to talk about each arrowhead without repeating myself.  Anyhow, this arrowhead was made from a portion of a porcellanite slab and has the weird shape due to a bad break.  I decided to go for this shape instead of reducing the arrowhead's size even further.

These three arrowheads were made for the second half of the two-week period.  The gray ones are the porcellanite, or non-volcanic glass, and the brown one is the bottom of a beer bottle.

Nothing too exciting happened with this piece.  The only thing of note is that this was from a porcellanite slab that I able to get three arrowheads from.  I hope to be able to get multiple arrowheads from the agate slabs.

As mentioned above, this came from a beer bottle bottom.  I had three bottles to work with, but only managed to make one arrowhead as the other bottles didn't want to work with me.  I started by scoring about the bottom of the bottle and striking it with a mallet.  The bottom itself was not exactly curved but rather composed of three straight sections as seen in the graphic.  The circled section was flat enough and thick enough that an arrowhead could be made.  There still is a slight curvature to the arrowhead, though.

This was my final arrowhead of the week and probably my worst.  Whereas I was able to remove the flat sections from all the other arrowheads, was unable to do so with this one.  The reason why was because I kept reducing the size to get the shape I wanted.  However, the best flaking can only be performed on the unworked edge of an arrowhead.  Once the edge has been worked numerous times, the flakes start to become short and thick.  If you look closely on the image, you can see a sort of boundary line on the right side.  I reduced the arrowhead by working at that side, but my flakes couldn't travel all the way across, resulting in a weird look.  This is also why many of the arrowheads I have made are smaller than I would like.  I can not get the flakes to travel as far as I want, so I try not to make any large arrowhead that will not turn out like I want.  Ultimately, I need to start with smaller pieces in order to get the best arrowheads I can.

Overall, this week was meant for me to start working on stone.  I did just that but also got some more practice in on some glass arrowheads.  I am on schedule and hope to use next week to practice more with stone arrowheads.  I believe I am on schedule because I have given myself a reasonable amount of time to learn the skills and because I have been working hard to learn those skills.  I should be making a few from the agates, so be sure to view my next blog to see them.

My blog was shorter than I would have liked, and I apologize if it was a bit disorganized, but I will have something neat next week to make up for it.