Knapping - My First Point(s)

[Mud Hawk]

Knapped these two today, they are my firsts! Started with the glass one, then started a second on a chert flake. After gaining a bit more understanding of the whole "soft touch" thing, I went back in on the glass piece and made it look all spiffy . I am hesitant to try nothching just yet.





This was tons of fun and I highly suggest it. I am hooked...

[joshuaream]

Those are about 10,000 times better than my first attempts. Good Job.

[drdave514]

I wouldn't want to get shot by them. Longer flakes, making thinner pieces(and a bit larger) will help get the notching thing rolling. It's very difficult to do on something with a width to thickness ratio like that. Thanks for showing them.

[Mud Hawk]

Thanks guys...

Last piece for today -- a tiny crescent.





Dead on DrDave. I am eager to try larger material but I still can't get a whole bottom out of the bottle (using the nail shook in bottle trick). Oh well, learning more and more each time.

[homestyle]

Originally Posted by joshuaream

Those are about 10,000 times better than my first attempts. Good Job.

Me too. I haven't done much pressure flaking though, mostly hammerstone and billet work with abo tools. The little crescent looks pretty, pretty, pretty good!

[neralich]

Lookin' good, Mud!!!! Keep it up!

[joshuaream]

That crescent is nice work. The good thing about knapping beer bottles is emptying them.

When I used to play around with knapping, I'd go to the dollar store and look for cheap glass plates and baking dishes. Pyrex was hard to knap, but they often sold these 4x4 glass plates that were just under 1/2 an inch thick. If I scored one side pretty well I could get two blanks out of each plate. Home Depot was hard to beat for buying individual glass kitchen tiles, they were too thin for me to work into a big point, but it was a good way to practice pressure flaking and notching.

[MikeE]

Nice work there for first ever. cut yourself yet? I try to find old glass that has more lead in it. Mostly I use beach glass that I find on the coast. Some samples of my work. might give you some ideas. The points I make get the hammer after I make them...I keep nothing but the scars.
M

[Mud Hawk]

Cool pieces MikeE and thanks for the ideas Joshua.

I can really kick myself in the (_|_)... I threw out about 20 sheets of old stained glass when I moved 4 years ago. They would have been perfect for knapping... lots of marbled glass too. Oh well, live and learn. Can't say my wife would have been happy with them "laying around" for four years either .

[Tocobaga]

The more I knap and think I'm improving the more I realize how much there is to learn and how much more rock I gotta break to get there...

I've found thinning to be a particular bear; I can do it, but I seem to lose width faster than I want compared to the thinning I get.

I've made a lot of "bullets"...

I guess it just makes me want to keep trying to figure it out that much more.