Hats of to early man

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Emdiesse

Settler
Jan 9, 2005
629
5
Surrey, UK
Today I attempted to make an arrow head out of the bottom of a glass bottle. After successfully removing the bottom of a glass bottle by putting a nail inside one and shaking it I proceeded to take off the rest of the edges with an antler tine, so far so good. I had one stubborn edge left that I just couldn't remove so I decided to try bashing it a bit with a hammer stone. I slowly chipped away at it until suddenly, disaster the whole bottom shattered into about three pieces.

I didn't give up, I picked up one piece if was tiny and pretty useless so I discarded it, the next piece I picked up and decided to practice a bit of pressure flaking, Understanding that I would need to try and remove the concave from the piece of glass I tried it with this little test piece. It was very interesting to see that on the obtusely curved side pressure flaking would take a flake of that could almost span from one edge to the other. On the bottom I just ended up with small flakes, I just persevered to try and flatten it by flaking away lots of small flakes from the bottom.

Then I picked up my last piece of glass with a plan to just try and do the same but more successfully, then I started to see how I could make a really small arrow head. I was trying to alternatively flake to get that desirable zig-zag edge however I think I need a little more practice to understand how to do that. I carried on flaking away at my little piece of glass until finally I ended up with this. It's a little small being about 3 cm in length (Which I also think made it harder)

FirstPoint.jpg

My First Point (~3cm) inset: Profile (I tried to remove the curvature of the bottles bottom, failed drastically at a zig-zag edge)


Understandably, early man would not have worked glass bottle bottoms so I can only imagine it being many times more difficult with flint. Obsidian I hear is similar to working glass.

My main question is, how do you start off the zig-zag edge? My edges where simply messy and I couldn't really find how you start the zig-zag because I'd take a flake off the turn it over to take off a (/an alternate) flake next to it but i'd find I have no platform either side of the flake and next to where I would have made the alternative flakes again i would have had no platforms for the next alternative edge... or so it felt. Secondly, when you have a long flat edge how do you start sharp zig-zag edges there because all I managed to do was bevel the edges of the flat edge, doh!
 

Samon

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Mar 24, 2011
3,970
44
Britannia!
well done mate! I think that is very very cool!

I hope you had fun and keep practicing, maybe get hold of some of that obsidian ;)
 

Emdiesse

Settler
Jan 9, 2005
629
5
Surrey, UK
well done mate! I think that is very very cool!

I hope you had fun and keep practicing, maybe get hold of some of that obsidian ;)

Hi Thanks, It was good fun. I plan to do a lot more practice with glass bottle bottoms then I'll look into progressing to the real stuff, wouldn't want to waste it too early on.
I feel I have learnt a lot and I have some new ideas to take on board for next time. Plus I feel it's worth posting this link I have just found: http://cavemanchemistry.com/oldcave/projects/stone/bottle.html
A brilliant guide to making an arrow head out of a glass bottle bottom. I'm going to read it and give it another go at some point.
 

ateallthepies

Native
Aug 11, 2011
1,558
0
hertfordshire
A bit of a cheat is to make a blank up using flat plate glass and a cutter of some sort. Cut it to the finished shape you want and just pressure flake it. I was once looking for some black glass tiles for just this purpose but got distracted with another hobby so never did it!

I tried knapping with flint years ago and got quite a few decent arrowheads but if I tried something bigger like a knife or spear head I struggled to get a big enough flake off the stone to work with and just ended up with piles of broken flint around me, lots of good arrow head flakes but nothing of decent size!

Steve.
 

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