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!