On this photo you can see some different types of stone found in a river nearby me. The left one is of a very coarse grained type. I use it for abrading platforms when knapping. The four other are of mediocre quality, small axe blanks, maybe except the one furthest down. The three to the right is greenstone.

The first sapling is bent around the groove, very tightly so it will not come loose. Bind the lower end with some willow bark to keep it together.

Take another branch and wrap in the same fashion behind the first one, only from the opposite direction. Use the narrowest end of the sapling to wrap around the top of the shaft to keep things together. Wrap together the saplings to a shaft with willow bark.

It chops beautifully, on small saplings almost as well as a metal hatchet in fact.

The pecking is done around the whole head, particular attention kept to the top and the bottom, since they will be the two most important points of connection to the handle. Pecking is done in a light motion, no force put into it, only the weigth of the stone is used. Don’t peck too deep and use the sharpest possible edge to keep work and risk of fracture at a minimum.

It’s that simple, the earlier processes in axe head construction can be found here. I will demonstrate hafting one of the nearest days.

Remember the chatroom.

I had heard that quartz responds to heat treating, so I decided to test high grade quartz, quartzite and something that resembles metabasalt. The flakes, no more than an inch thick, were buried a few centimetres below the surface. A small fire was made on top and maintained for between 1 and 2 hours.

I then brushed the coals aside and let the ground cool for a little while. My immediate reaction when digging up the flakes were that the pieces of quartz seemed more shiny and glossy. There was no visible difference on the quartzite and metabasalt.

When testing the pieces I found that the quartz knapped much easier. The flakes travelled easier and didn’t step in the regular fashion. It also felt sharper. On the quartzite, which supposedly doesn’t respond to heat treating I found a small positive change, although it may be just my bias. The metabasalt just became more brittle and crumbled under any flaking.

I didn’t expect any change during such a short time of exposure to such relatively small temperatures. As the results were quite pleasing, I’m not sure much more would be recommended with the quartz, since it may become too brittle, but it may be worth experimenting with higher temperatures and/or longer time in the ground with quartzite.

The advantages with this type of knife:

• Gives you leverage when using rather small blades.
• No need for retouching to protect your hands. That saves on edges, which you need as you can get of in an as stone poor place as this.
• Quicker than hafting in the regular fashion.

First, I broke off a piece of willow and split it down the middle just by seperating the fibres from the break. Don’t split it all the way through. It will be useful to have the attached still connected to clamp the blade in place.

Start the wrapping by inserting the willow branch into the crack, on the inner side of the blade. Make a few turns around on that side before taking a wrap over the backside of the blade.

Wrap the other end tightly down to clamp the blade properly. Secure the small willow branch wrap by inserting it into the crack twice.

Not exactly a work of art, but very handy. And disposable too.

When I have done that I start grinding much more steeply to even out any dips in the front. In this particular piece there was a rather deep flake scar in the front from testing the blank’s integrity.

When the edge is totally even, the most timeconsuming part begins. Narrowing the bit to a usable bevel takes quite a while. Work systematically and if unmotivated, take a look on the progress. I think you’ll be surprised of how quick it really is. I used only about 1,5 hours on the bit of this particular axe.

The last task on this piece is to make the handle. A task I fear will take longer than all of the stonework combined.

Knapping the bit

To understand knapping, you need to understand how stone breaks. The force of the blow is distrbuted in a conical shape beneath the blow. A cone itself isn’t very useful, but when you understand that this is the way the force from the hammer (either stone, antler or hard wood) goes you know that you will need to tilt the core away from the direction of the blow to achieve a flake instead. The angle is different for the different hammer materials used. The drawing shows hammerstone striking off a flake at left, in the middle working the flake with an antler billet, upper right shows the principle of abrading the edges, lower right shows pressure flaking.

This is the principle of all knapping, but with fine pressure flaking you need to press more in the direction of the flake because the force is less sudden and the force travels in a more delayed fashion. This is a function both of the material used (antler) and the speed of application. Below I am using an elk (moose) antler billet to strike off a flake.

If the force isn’t sufficient to fully free the flake from the core, you will end up with step fractures. They are abrupt changes in direction of the break and chances are, unless you strike off a very thick flake and thereby removing the step, every succeeding flake will end in that step, in effect reinforcing the step in every removal. The easiest remedy for a serious step is usually to attack it from a different angle, either from the the opposite end or from one of the sides.

When knapping, thinking in stages is quite recommendable, but I often mix them a little as suits me best. The first stage after the flake removal is to make the flake regular and thin it. This is usually done by using a soft hammer, like an antler billet. On smaller pieces you may do it by pressure flaking. Below: Pressure flaking in my own hazardous way.

When the perform is finished, you can start shaping the piece by pressure flaking. By putting a lot of pressure on the edge quite parallell to the flake itself, you will further thin the blank. This is not always what is wanted however, especially in the last phases of the knapping where you may want to strenghten the edge instead of thinning it. To achieve that use more sideways instead of parallell pressure. To be able to apply enough pressure to press off good sized flakes and to have strong enough platforms for striking of blades you will often need to abrade the edges to strengthen them.

Safety isn’t my strong point to be honest, but since the flakes are horribly sharp it should be taken into consideration. I don’t use googles, where would I get those in the wild? But by pressure flaking towards your palm (pad it with leather) or a hard surface the flakes will more than likely not hit your eyes. Being of a rather lazy nature, I often take a shortcut on this and pressure flake with my index finger and thumb pinch. If you don’t take care that can cause flakes to fly in your face. If you get a small flake in you eye, it can usually be removed by blinking under water. But by all means, be careful. The photo shows the safer way of pressure flaking.

This drill bit is now finished and ready to be hafted. These instructions can be applied to most knapping and certainly arrowheads. Sorry the poor quality of the photo.

I have made two of these axe (celt) heads before. One was hafted and tested and it definately worked very well. The second one still needs to be hafted. On this photo that particular head is found on the far right, the pecking stone (previously a hand axe from quartzite) to the left and the head in progress in the middle.

River cobbles often provide a minimum of work to make an axe. The one in centre on this photo has been integrity tested by chipping off a little piece in the front. Good axe stone is homogenous and hard.

The first stage in producing an axe head is to peck it down to the approximate shape. Be careful on the edge, not to chip the stone. The sharper a piece you use as a pecking stone, the more precise you can do the pecking and it is also faster. The next phase on making this axe is to grind the edge of the head sharp. By the way, I don’t usually peck stone in the bedroom, this photo is staged.