Tools I made

I decided to make myself some Christmas presents this year. Didn't buy anything, just used some old wood I picked up years ago and some antler tines, either too small or too ugly to use on knives.



I've began experimenting mounting hard hammerstones on sticks and found more comfortable to hold, because of leverage you don't need to hit so hard and more accurate.

The wood and thin antler one is a fine notcher.

The all antler one is a pressure flaker at one end and a soft percussion bopper at the other. I hollowed out the thick antler, filled the bopper end with lead. This one works great, should have done is years ago.

Forgive my ignorance, but is the all antler one made out of one piece thinned down at one end, or did you put a thinner piece into it.

I'm assuming the latter, but haven't worked with antler too often, so can't really tell.

It's made of two pieces of antler, the advantage being when it wears down you can replace it.

Ahhh... All is explained.

I think I might play with some antler tools. When I first started, I tried using antler for pressure and percussion flaking, but I was just so bad at it.

I've been doing a lot more successful pressure flaking of late, and feel more confident about what I'm doing.

I've been trying to use abo tools in my latest attempts. I can use stone for the early stages but tend to go back to the copper bopper for the later. Though I'm just beginning to attempt to use the cow bone for that. The main problem I find is platform making, they're really difficult to make with anything but copper, abo tools are so much larger and more clumsy.

I watched a chap on youtube who uses the large 52mm copper billet for most of his knapping. There again, also watched Will Lord use a small stone to work a flake from start to finish.

I suppose it's just a case of keep knapping with whatever is your tools of choice until it's almost second nature.

If you are attempting to use more natural tools, I suppose you have to enter it with the frame of mind that those tools are the only available ones to you, so you find ways round the problems.

(Give me about 30 years, might start getting there myself:D )

I've been reading about tool authenticiy this week to try and work out what is exactly authentic and what isn't.

From the info I've gathered so far in the stone age hard stone such as pebbles, soft stones such as limestone, very dense wood and antlers were all used for percussion, all acheiveing a variety of different effects. For pressure flaking, it seems to be antler (check out Otzli the iceman's pressure flaker on google pictures), one case of ivory and possibly even stone.

During the copper/bronze age things get a little vaguer, the use of copper is there but pretty rare. Solid lumps of copper to used as hammerstones have be found, I've not found any evidence of copper for pressuring yet, though some graves in the UK do have mysterious bronze rods of undetermined use, almost identical to what goes in a modern pressure flakers.

I have made a copy of Otzi's pressure flaker and found it worked well, although it was only ment for display. There are copper pressure flaker rods that have been excavated on an American Indian site in a cave, these are from an area where raw copper blobs are naturally available on the surface. Sadly I can't remember where though!
Also the Bronze age awls found in England do look very much like pressure flaking tips, and I have illustrated hundreds and not one has any sign of wear typical of use on flint unfortunatly!

Just found this article, perhaps suggests copper boppers are more authentic than people think.

http://monache.blogspot.com/2007/12/copper-hammer-head-for-billet.html

This least shows copper flakers were possible.