Homemade Arrowheads

Homemade arrowheads number 2 and 3

As a kid I found a few stone tools. As gray man, I was given two cores, and I bought some arrowheads in a thrift shop. It fascinates me to hold them. Touch really is window into the past, that just looking at them in a museum does not offer.

So I wanted take this one step further, by trying my hand at making them. Would I have an intuition for it? Is it hard to learn?

So I gathered some chunks of glass, some obsidian, a piece flint, a stone that could be my hammer stone, a piece of antler (that someone bought for my by then toothless dog) plus safety goggles and gloves. (Not very traditional, but without them, knapping arrowheads is incompatible with photography.)

It is easier than I thought. I figured the glass would tell me the most about how it fractures internally, so I started there. The first attempt at an arrowhead I made was too clunky. It took me about an hour to figure out how to knap a long yet thin flake of off a core, copying what I saw on my ancient flint cores. 

Then, with the antler (which is still the safest tool, as it does not splinter) I could work the flakes into these arrowheads. In the photo, you can see my second and third attempt. They are a few mm thin.

I could see how reliably producing good flakes would be the best skill to learn. From my experiment, I also think most people in the communities were able to make their own tools, and how it likely was not a profession of a single person.

The amount of razor sharp debris is annoying, though. That will be what keeps met from making this a regular hobby. It was likely the first non-biodegradable pollution, while blindness must have been the first occupational disease.