@Dooley Fussle-- I make telescope optics out of glass, and it is easily annealed to relieve internal stress. The secret formula I use is 60 hours per inch of thickness cooling from 550 deg C down to 350. Above 550 cool as fast as you like; the glass is not quite solid and will support no strss. Below 350 the glass will be stressed, but the stress is relieved when room temp equilibriun is reached, so cool as fast as you can without gracturing.
Lovely handax! I've been trying to learn this style as the "mother of all stone tools"! Where did you acquire that large block of glass? My local glass artists wouldn't sell or give me any of their glass as they said the heating and re-heating would put too much stress into it and it would likely break in unpredictable ways.
I have really enjoyed your videos. One thing I will say, you are very brave knapping in open toed shoes. I did that once with obisidian and had tiny shards all between my toes.
I don't wear shorts, but when doing jobs like this, I always make sure the bottom of the trousers ride over the top of my boots to shed any falling rubbish before it can get down into the boots. On bigger work, I wear hockey shin pads. I'm no wimp but I am type one diabetic so have to take special care not to get injuries to my lower leg and feet. Old fashioned gaiters would work well too.
Good work. I confess I don't even like to knap obsidian anymore because the slivers turn invisible if you get one in you and have to be felt for with the tip of something when you dig them out. And you do have to dig them out...I've made a lot of points from TV screens, I actually learned to knap on that, the older screens are about 15-20mm thick.
Awesome always loved the Kimberly heads and the Quarz crystal tools... Seeing this, i just hope they had really good vacuum cleaners in the neolithic....
Great job showing how to do this, it just gives me the shakes seeing you do it in sandals and cargo pants. I wear long pants when I'm doing obsidian, can't imagine doing it like this. I don't imagine that the block of glass was any too cheap either. Ever thought of doing a crimson colored axe head ? That would be something I would like to see you do. Thanks for the great video...!
Five minutes in and I'm absolutely terrified of the beyond razor-sharp edges that the glass must be making with every strike and then it dawns on me, "Duh, the same thing happens with the flint. That's the whole point." And now I have to get over being an absolute numpty all this time.
Absolutely wonderful! So great to see what we would have been doing in the Paleo: how long it takes, the sounds, the tool kit. You are such a blessing to this community. Thank you.
My wife operates on eyes and, honestly, it's not far off. Any manual technique is pretty rough compared to the structure of an eye, but with good control/constraint and understanding of what materials do under certain stresses, very fine and precise surgery is possible.
Hope you wear a mask or have adequate airflow araw from the workpiece. Apparently you can be breathing in small glass dust in enclosed spaces resulting in silicosis of the lungs.
@AncientCraftUK Great to see another video from you. Quick question. During your experimental processes have you tried using a hand axe as a throwing weapon? And if so how effective is it? I ask as during some lectures by Prof Brian Fagan that I have been listening to he mentions its possible use as a throwing weapon as far back as Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus. My point in asking being. Would they be any more effective than throwing any normal stone as i find it strange that someone would throw an item they had spent so much effort in producing when a normal stone would likely prove just as effective.
They wouldn’t be terribly effective throwing implements, some experiments conducted years ago by Reading Uni found they only resulted in a sliced hand when launched
Where would be a good place to acquire glass for knapping. I have busted the bottom out of square liquor bottles and made points. I would love to get ahold of a cube like you have.
Incredible talent! Except that wonderful hand axe was already in the big glass chunk.... all it needed was the good Doctor to remove the excess pieces of glass from it.... : )
Beautiful glass hand axe. Of what use would it be other than to say, "I made that and it's pretty?" How many strikes on a one inch sapling would it survive?
I have an exquisite little arrow head my daughter made at university. The thing is that it should have been a handaxe - as her Professor said to her at the time: "One of the main rules of flint knapping is to know when to stop knapping and when to start napping!" Wouldn't it be great to have been at the dawn of history when one of our ancestors was sitting there on a log and thought: I wonder what would happen if I hit THIS stone with THIS stone. Oh! WOW! . . . .
I have watched many of your videos, Dr., and to me, this is your finest. Your striking accuracy & control with abo tools is just phenomenal! The only problem I had watching this video was that my anxiety level and blood pressure kept rising as you neared the end, and continued striking. I kept thinking, "Stop, for God's sake, James! It's lovely now, so stop already"! Excellent work, Dr.
These videos would be so much better if James would interact with some of the excellent topical questions that the viewers have submitted. Without that, it is going to be hard to get people to like and subscribe
Fascinating! As for the finishing touches, I wonder if what has been discovered is more toward a many times retooled hand ax rather than the original construct. Just a thought…
How about a demonstration of it chopping? Very nice, and interesting job. thank You. I don't think flint, or glass knapping would have been my forte. I am sure it required a lot of patience, plus good eyes and steady hands. I did have steady hands, in my youth, but I don't think 1 out of 3 would be good enough.
It probably wouldn’t survive chopping wood, but then again handaxes were not made for this las they are primarily butchery tools. It would certainly work for dismembering a carcass
Some may have, but in the rare instance wood survives at Palaeolithic sites, digging sticks have been found. Using them as digging tools would be a quick way of blunting their edges
It's really instructive to see just how many tiny glass fragments and how much glass dust break off as you're working. I think it's easier to see the same in chert or flint and just say "oh it's only dust" but really, it's not much different than these shards of glass. I'm not keen on breathing that in or getting it in my eyes.
No you don't want to inhale any kind of silica dust. I always recommend knapping of any kind outdoors or in a well ventilated place and to always wear the appropriate PPE (safety glasses, gloves and leather leg protection.)
Who will loose,, we are headed 2 steps back to hell and 1 step forward into the second Paleolithic, you better learn knapping 101 if you don't you just might end up someones cave honey.
You can just buy big glass stones originaly made for garden decoration... i just bought a 5kg box of glass stones in the size of 10-20cm and it works just fine
They are nothing special, I usually get mine from a garden center! Ideally you don't want gloves that are too thick to prevent you from loosing dexterity...
I guess artificial flawless flint is technically glass. If you tried to melt flint you would end up smelting the silica from it (and was used as a method to make glass in the 18th/19th C)
@@ancientcraftUK interesting i love the idea of working with flint but hate the idea of depleting a natural rescource thats been ravaged for millions of years.
So many nappers....do any of these knappers actually attach their products to real arrows? They knapp as a hobby and have never made a real hunting bow. Knapp knapp... all to make videos.
I believe quite a few knappers make full arrows and provide arrowheads to hunters in the US who use them for actual hunting (we can’t do that in the UK). The closest I get is to making full arrows and using them for TV projects
