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)
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!
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)
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!