Upsizing Arrows

It's been a while since I've
bought feathers, but I wanted
to match the banded fletching
on the original reference
arrow.

Now that I've fallen out of practice with blogging, I don't know how I ever managed to put up three blog posts a week for so many years.  It seems like months slip by and I can no longer find an hour or two to share a few words and photos.  I am still around and I am still working, although I have been distracted by some non-Elfshot related work and opportunities so the output from my workshop has been low this fall.  I have some large bifaces started for an overdue set of Alaskan PalaeoIndian spears and this week I have a rush job to up-size some arrows.

I found some inexpensive knives at Canadian tire to create the arrowhead blanks to match the reference arrow.

I need to make 10 copies

I have a reference arrow that is a few inches too small for it's intended purpose, so I'm reproducing it at a larger scale.  Today I found all of the raw materials that I need - Ozark turkey feathers from a fly tying shop for the feathers, suitable wood for the shafts, and a set of stainless steel table knives from Canadian Tire to turn into the metal arrowheads.  The roughed out arrowheads have been coated in muriatic acid to accelarate the antiquing overnight and with any luck I'll be able to begin assembling the 10 arrows tomorrow.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Declawing a Thule Harpoon Head

I spent a good chunk of the day breaking the Ikaahuk artifact
reproductions.  For the most part they broke the way they were supposed to, so it's all good.  The piece that needed the most damage done to it was the Thule barbed harpoon head from Nelson River.  The original artifact has only one remaining barb, but you can see places on the body of the harpoon head where three other barbs broke off, leaving stumps of various sizes.  The plan from the beginning was to make a fully intact version of the harpoon head, photograph it, and then break it to match the original artifact.  Below are some of the last photos of the complete harpoon head before I cracked the three barbs off (right).

The slots cut on either side of the open socket were there so that some sort of lashing (ie. sinew, leather, baleen) could be used to close the socket so that it could fit onto a harpoon foreshaft. 

The original artifact and this reproduction were both oriented in the antler tine so that the hard outer surface of the antler was on the dorsal surface.  The softer, more porous interior of the antler meant it was easier to carve out the open socket at the base. 

The dorsal surface of the harpoon head.  The small hole in the centre was for the harpoon line.  The larger hole below that is part of the gouged channel for the lashing that closes off the open socket.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

The Pre-Dorset awl reproduction

Pre-Dorset awl reproduction (top) and artifact
(below), refit with a lance head from the same
site.

The Pre-Dorset awl is the next finished reproduction in the Ikaahuk Archaeology Project set to check off the list.  The reproduction is made from antler and the antiquing includes tea staining, scorching and hand-carved root etching.  This is the artifact that I believe was made from an old foreshaft, so part of the check to determine the accuracy of the reproduction was to match it with the slot on the Pre-Dorset lance head.  I wanted  the spatulate end of the reproduction awl to fit the original lance head as precisely as the artifact awl.  When those two pieces fit together, I felt like I could call the piece finished.  I may continue to tweak the colour and staining over the next few days, but I think this piece is done.

Artifact (left) and reproduction (right)

Other pieces, like this harpoon head are still a couple visits away from being complete.  This one has so many complex angles and symmetries, that its hard to plan too many cuts at once.  Shaving the wrong millimetre at this point could throw off the whole piece. 

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Final touch-ups to the Offset Awl

I was putting the final touches on the offset awl today.  I scorched the wood a little with the blowtorch to antique the handle, applied some ochre staining where the awl meets the wood to match some rust on the original artifact and applied a bit of oil to try to match the gloss of the treated iron.  Hopefully it is a good match with the original when I compare them tomorrow.  As the pieces in this set are completed I'll have more time in my workshop to begin new projects.  I have a few projectile points from Western Canada and the Western Arctic to knap next. 

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Staining Beothuk Reproductions

A first coat of ochre
and oil

 I'm finishing off the week by staining some Beothuk reproductions.  I need to ochre stain some pendants and gaming pieces and try to get some rust and age on a few nails.  I need to pull together an assortment of old fashioned square cut nails to show the sort of nails that the Beothuk were scavenging from early European sites in Newfoundland.  Right now I have three different sizes and vintages of nails ranging from antiques to newly made nails and I want them all to look more or less contemporaneous.  I'm starting by staining them in tannic acid made from tea.  I'll see what they look like after a soak overnight.  I imagine I'll wind up taking a hammer and blow torch to them as well.  Hopefully that will be enough to blend them into one coherent batch.  If not, there's still muriatic acid.

The carved pattern is nearly invisible on the unstained bone, but once the ochre goes on the lines start to pop.

Tea staining the iron nails.  You can see a few little shiny nails in the mix, I want to antique those so that they match the bigger rusty nails.

Ground ochre and oil for the bone pendants and gaming pieces.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Why Antique Dorset Palaeoeskimo Reproductions?

Dorset (L) and Thule (R)
harpoon head reproductions

Most of the Dorset Palaeoeskimo and Thule-Inuit reproductions for the Clyde River order are made now.  I just need to do some assembly on the composite arrows and harpoons and wait for various glues, rawhide and sinew bindings to dry.  The only major pieces that I haven't started on are a few microblades and a core.  I'm leaving them until last because they always take me a bit of time and luck and that will give me extra drying time on the other pieces.  Throughout the assembly stage, I've been antiquing the Dorset Palaeoeskimo antler and whalebone reproductions.  I'm doing this to create a visual contrast between the two sets and also to illustrate one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the Canadian Arctic.

Antiqued Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon head reproduction
in antler

The Inuit have always said that there were other people living in the Eastern Arctic before they arrived.  They called them the Tunit (Tunnit, Tuniit, etc).  In 1925, an archaeologist named Diamond Jenness identified the Cape Dorset culture based on a set of artifacts from Cape Dorset, Baffin Island.  He recognized that these artifacts were not quite like the tools made by the Inuit and their ancestors and he suggested that the Cape Dorset culture pre-dated the Inuit.  One of the clues that helped Jenness identify the age of the culture was the dark colour of the artifacts.  The more recent Inuit artifacts that Jenness was familiar with were relatively light coloured, while these artifacts from Cape Dorset were made in a peculiar style and were a darker brown.  Today we recognize that the people that the Inuit called the Tunit and the people who left behind the artifacts that Jenness' called the Cape Dorset culture were most likely one and the same.

Diamond Jenness photo and brief bio from a display on his work at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. (click to enlarge)

Some of the first dark stained artifacts from Cape Dorset that helped Jenness define the Cape Dorset culture in 1925.  CMC display.  (Click to Enlarge)

Inuit artifacts collected during the 1913-1918 Canadian Arctic Expedition and studied by Jenness.  He correctly surmised that the dark artifacts from Cape Dorset must have been significantly older.

I want to represent Jenness' discovery in
the colour contrast of the dark coloured
Palaeoeskimo reproductions and the light
coloured Thule/Inuit reproductions in this set.

Since the artifact reproductions in this set represent both early Inuit and Dorset Palaeoeskimo cultures and they are going to be used in a teaching collection on Baffin Island, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect the same colour contrast in the bone, antler and ivory tools that Jenness first noticed in the collection that he studied from Cape Dorset.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Antler, Seeds and Robots

Tea Bath to antique the antler

I'm still plugging away on the bone and antler reproductions.  Some are ready to be stained and distressed to match the original artifacts.  I can usually get the colours and textures pretty close to the originals.  Root etching and dried roots growing through the pores is something that I haven't quite figured out yet.  Maybe I'll try growing chia or grass seeds on the antler.  If I dry out the roots, they might look like the artifact has been buried with roots still clinging to them.  I doubt they'd be strong enough to etch the antler in just a few days, though.

Our new robot vacuum

Maybe I'll go seed shopping this evening.  I guess I'm feeling a little housebound.  I went out earlier today to buy our first house robot.  I've been watching TED talks on Netflix religiously for the last week.  There was an old one from 2003 by the guy who made the Roomba.  Robot vacuum technology has been around for a decade, so they must be doing something right.  They are on for $100 off at Canadian Tire right now. Anyone have a Roomba or Roomba story to share?

I like the idea of having a robot clean my house while I'm outside making tools out of rocks and antlers.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Harpoon Heads with Copper Endblades

Antler and copper harpoon head

So I was able to get that little harpoon head done that I promised myself I would finish yesterday.  Mostly.  I'm still fussing over the patina on the copper endblade and the rivets, but that's mostly waiting to see what sort of colour I'll get from the red wine vinegar and Miracle Gro solution.  The thing is assembled, and I can focus on other pieces.  This is reproduction #10 of 17 in the Central Arctic set that is based on Inuit artifacts in the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Its quite small - 7.7 cm long x 2.3 cm wide across the endblade

I'm still fussing with the patina

The smaller, white harpoon head is the finished one.  The larger brown head is part of a complete harpoon, so it can't be called finished until the rest of the harpoon is assembled.  You can see the original artifacts that they are based on in the CMC's online artifact catalog:

Harpoon Head IV-D-1818

Harpoon IV-D-692

This one needs a harpoon

It looks like the harpoon head from the complete harpoon might actually have a steel endblade, but for the reproduction I'll be using copper.  There is another harpoon head in this set which will have a steel endblade, so that material will be represented there.

Riveting work!

I'm enjoying making all these metal pieces, especially the rivets.  Its good practice.  I've made copper riveted pieces in the past, but never so many at once and they can be tricky to make, especially in material that is softer than the rivet.  If you get impatient with hammering the rivets in a soft material, like antler or slate, the rivet can crack the piece that you are working on as it expands in the hole.  Which really sucks, because the rivets are often the final step and breaking a piece just when you think its finished can be a nightmare.  Fortunately, that didn't happen here and I've been careful to drill the rivet heads with a small dimple before hammering to help the heads expand outward.  Then I hammer them very lightly and periodically file the heads with a metal file to help remove excess metal while tapping the head into the right shape and smoothing it down against the antler.

seems small

This is quite a small harpoon head, only 7.7 cm long and 2.3 cm wide across the widest part of the endblade.  Based on the proportions in the reference photos, I made the antler harpoon head about 3.8 cm long.  Together with the large endblade it seems like a functional harpoon head, but if the antler was found on its own, it would be tempting to call it a miniature.  The reproduction that I've shown here is based on an Inuit artifact, but small harpoon heads were common amongst earlier Palaeoeskimo collections as well.  Robert Park and Pauline Mousseau published an excellent paper in 2003 called How Small Is Too Small: Dorset Culture "Miniature" Harpoon Heads, which deals with awkwardly sized harpoon heads in Palaeoeskimo sites.  They found that a lot of very small harpoon heads could have been functional.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Bone Thimble and Antler Netting Shuttle

Finished shuttle and thimble

I finished a bone thimble and an antler netting shuttle today.  Both pieces are based on artifacts from the Central Arctic.  The original artifacts that I'm working off of for this set are in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and you can view them in the CMC's online archaeology catalog:

Shuttle: IV-D-2958
Thimble: IV-D-467

Antler Shuttle: 10.5cm x 1.3cm

Netting Shuttle:  The shuttle is made from caribou antler.  I used a piece of the flat palm of the antler.  I cut out the rough shape and then split the antler down the middle along the spongy interior, so that I had two solid blanks.  I kept on in reserve and thinned the other mainly on the inside surface to remove as much of the spongy antler as possible.

Wound with thread, ready to use

The thread shown wrapped around the shuttle in the photo isn't part of the reproduction - I just loaded it up with a bit of string to show how it was used.  Shuttles like these are used in net making to hold the string while the net maker strings and knots the net.  It combines the function of a bobbin of thread with the performance of a needle.

It fits Lori's little finger

Bone Thimble:  1.6cm x 1.6cm.  This tiny bone thimble is made on dense bone.  I suspect that the original may have been made from a portion of long bone, to take advantage of the natural cylinder shape of such elements.  I couldn't find a suitable sized long bone in my collection; they were either much to large or much too small, so I carved, drilled, ground and polished it out of a bit of dense skull bone.

A dimple goes at each intersection

The dimples on the original piece are arranged in columns of 7 or 8 dots running all the way around the piece. I laid out that pattern on my thimble in pencil and then used the dremel tool to hand drill each dimple.  There's 46 columns of dimples, which works out to about 350 dimples covering the entire surface.  I soaked the dimpled thimble in tea to antique it a bit.  I used beeswax stained with charcoal to plug some of the holes and match the dirt/grease stains on the original artifact.  I need to remember the beeswax and charcoal trick - I'm really happy with the way it grimed up the surface.

Antiqued bone thimble: 1.6cm wide x 1.6cm tall

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Needles and bones

Copper needle in patinating solution

I had a full day in the workshop yesterday - probably the only one I'll get this week, so I was relieved to make some progress on the big Central Arctic order.  The fox bone necklace is pretty much finished, I just need to size the sinew cord and let the bones dry out a bit more.  They are damp from tea staining.  I also made a couple needles for the order - one from copper (right) and one from bird bone.  The bird bone needle is completely finished and the copper needle is sitting in a Miracle Gro and red wine vinegar solution so that it will grow a nice warm green patina.

The tea stained the cartilage rich areas most

I don't have the actual artifacts to work from for this project and the only reference photos that I are from the Canadian Museum of Civilization's artifact catalog.  I don't have permission to reproduce those images on this blog, so if you'd like to see the original artifacts, you can check them out here:

Needle IV-D-329

Needle IV-D-330

Necklace IV-D-371

hammered needle blank and copper wire

To make the copper needle, I started with a short section of heavy copper ground wire - the same stuff that I use when I make copper tipped pressure flakers.  The finished needle needed to be 7.2 cm long, 3 mm wide and 1 mm thick.  I started cold hammering a section of wire about 1 inch long (slightly shorter than the one in the photo) and that gave me a blank the correct length, but about twice as thick and wide as I needed it to be.  I used the wet grinding wheel to slowly grind it down to the correct size.  I tapped it with the hammer from time to time, partly to help thin out thick spots, but also to keep it from becoming too smooth and regular.  I used a rotary tool to drill the hole while the needle was still a little thicker than it needed to be, so that I'd have room to correct any errors in the eye's shape or placement. 

Antiquing bones in tea and copper in miracle gro and vinegar

Eventually I ground the needle down to the final dimensions.  The hammering hardens the copper and despite its small dimensions, it is surprisingly stiff.  You could certainly bend it if you tried, but its much stronger than it looks.  Its all done, except for the antiquing, which I apply by letting it sit in an evaporating bowl of red wine vinegar saturated with Miracle Gro.  The recipe I use is outlined in this blog post: Patinating Copper Experiments. 

bone needle and sinew

The client also requested a bone needle of similar dimensions.  I made it much the same as the copper needle, except I cracked it out of a hollow bird bone, rather than hammer it out of a copper wire.  This gave me a 1mm thick needle blank, which I ground into its final shape on the wet wheel and a bit of sandpaper.  I left a little more bone above the eye of the needle, because the bird bone is not as strong as the copper and the extra material will help keep the needle from splitting.  I finished it with a quick dip in a cup of hot tea to give it a bit of a warmer antiqued look than stark white bone.

Bird Bone needle with sinew thread, 7.2cm x 0.3cm x 0.1cm

Needles; copper (L), Bone (R)

The copper needle is much heavier than the bone needle, although they have nearly identical dimensions.  In the past, the bone needle would have been much quicker and easier to make, while the copper needle would be a more durable and valuable tool.

Copper shows up frequently in ethnographic and archaeological collections from the Central Arctic and this set of reproductions will have several copper endblades, arrowheads, rivets, and scrapers to show off in the upcoming weeks.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Newly Completed Parks Reproductions

Here's a look at the most recent batch of completed artifact reproductions. These are some of the bigger pieces that Parks Canada is having me reproduce, so having them in the finished pile makes me feel like the work is almost over. At this point the bulk of the work is done and its coming down to some very nit-picky back and forth antiquing.

Wooden Handle: (Ivvavik National Park). This artifact (middle in both photos) has a few competing interpretations, including dog whip handle and gaff handle. My preference is gaff handle. There is a rust stained channel on one end with a squarish cross section that appears to have held an iron object, perhaps an iron spike modified into a gaff hook. There is a ghost of a cord wrapping around that channel which would have held the iron object in place. The artifact has a roughly octagonal cross-section and the end opposite the rust stained channel is burned. It looks like the rest of the gaff handle was burned away.
Probably the most challenging aspect of this reproduction was matching the ghost of the cord wrapping. On the artifact, the points where the cord touched the wood are light and the darker staining is in the gaps between the cord. So I couldn't just stain a cord and wrap it around the handle, because that would give me the opposite pattern that I needed. That would stain where the twine was, not where the twine wasn't. Instead I coated a length of twine in beeswax, twisted it to match the twist of the cord on the original artifact and then applied a water-based stain. The wax blocked the stain from penetrating the wood everywhere that the cord touched, but it could concentrate in the gaps between the twists in the cord. I put on a coat of wood conditioner before wrapping the cord and applying the stain to try to keep the stain from seeping into the wood grain too much.

Drilled Antler: (Aulavik National Park) I didn't really expect to get as close a match as this turned out to be. I've talked in other posts about all the shaping and bending that went into this piece. It was tough to create a natural looking antler surface on a piece that was almost completely modified from the original, but I'm happy with the results. There are many layers of antler dust, charcoal, rock dust, saw dust, carpenters glue, and wood stain to create the cracked weathered look. In the photo with the case, the reproduction is in the foreground and the artifact is in the background.

The main area that I wanted to leave natural antler was in the cross-section of the cut. Six holes were drilled through the antler and then it was cracked off through the holes. The best way to make that look real was to drill six holes and then crack it. I got lucky and it cracked just like the original. In the photo, the artifact is on the left and the reproduction is on the right.

Whalebone Adze Socket: (Ivvavik National Park) This is one of those reproductions where the raw material does half the work for you (artifact is in the center). There isn't any other material that looks or feels quite like whalebone. In the photo at the top of the post you can see the hole where the bit would have been inserted, probably stone. The narrowed section is the hafting area for the handle, which are often made from a section of caribou antler and tie on with skin lashings. An adze is a woodworking tool, similar to an axe, but with the blade mounted flat, like a hoe. It would also be very handy for working whalebone, which can be worked similarly to wood. There is very little antiquing here, just a bit of tea staining and then a smudge of charcoal to match a greasy black patch on the top of the original.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: Whalebone Adze Socket (middle) and reproductions
Second: Wooden Handle (middle) and reproductions
Third: Wooden Handle (middle) and reproductions
Fourth: Staining the cord markings
Fifth: Drilled Antler reproduction (forground) and original artifact
Sixth: side by side comparison of drilled end, original artifact on the left
Seventh: Whalebone adze socket (middle) and reproductions

Accelerating Rust with Muriatic Acid

The Fort Garry Tobacco tin and the composite barbed point both have rusted elements to them. I've been experimenting with muriatic acid to oxidize the metal in these reproductions. Muriatic acid is dilute (20%) hydrochloric acid and can be found in some hardware stores. I picked this bottle up at Canadian Tire, but not all places have it. Its used for cleaning concrete and changing the pH in swimming pools. This is a much more potent chemical than the vinegar and miracle gro I was using on the copper. I only work with this stuff outside and wearing rubber gloves.

I've seen recipes that call for diluting the muriatic acid anywhere from 1:5 to 1:20 with water. More acid doesn't necessarily work any better - I've been getting good results in the 1:10 to 1:20 acid to water solutions.

One source that I found said that dissolving copper in the acid solution helps the rusting process. I dropped a couple pieces of heavy copper ground wire in the solution and the acid has been eating away at them. That seemed to work, but I'm finding that too much copper in the solution is bad. Instead of creating rust, its started depositing a sheen of copper on the surface (left, you can see patches of copper). Its an interesting effect, but not what I'm going for. The solution with the copper in it has turned a noticeable green colour (top photo, in the bottle with the metal lid - which was a dumb move by the way, the inside of the lid has a rubber coating, but everytime I open and close it, acid from my gloves corrodes the outside of the lid. Glass and plastic containers only with muriatic acid!) . By the time I noticed the colour change it was too late. I'll keep the solution as it is for the future, but I'll remember that a green solution has too much copper in it.

Temperature and humidity are important as well. The best rust forms on dry sunny days. I tried soaking a paper towel in the acid solution and laying it on the tin yesterday, but that turned the metal black. My guess is that it didn't get enough oxygen to oxidize red. I removed the paper towel and re-wet it with water and the black faded and went back to orange. On other occasions I have left it out in the rain overnight and it seemed to go more black than red on those occasions as well, again, I think it wasn't getting enough oxygen. The inset photo shows a before and after shot of yesterdays treatment. The copper patches are gone and the rust came on nice and orange. A little more tweaking and this piece will be done.

On another occasion, I tried covering the tin in sawdust soaked with the diluted muriatic acid solution so that I could clump it and control where the acid contacted the metal. That worked alright, except I used yew sawdust, which is very red and it actually stained the paint a light rose colour, which I've been working at reversing ever since. It didn't hurt the rusty areas, so on a piece without paint, the extra red would probably have helped. In the future, I may try it again with white sawdust, like pine or spruce. The sawdust seemed to work alright because it was still breathable and let oxygen get in and react with the metal, but for now I'm just dabbing acid on with a paper towel and leaving it exposed to the air.

So far, the rustproof paints that I used have kept the acid at bay. The rust only grows in the spots where I've scraped through the paint and exposed the metal. I'm not sure how many acid treatments the paint will withstand. There might be some cracking developing. So far its adding to the antiquing process, but I can imagine that at some point the acid will damage the paint more than I'd like it to. In unpainted areas, like the back of the tine, (right) the rust forms within a few hours on a sunny day and immediately give the metal an antiqued look. A couple weeks ago this was the inside of a new biscuit tin.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Muriatic Acid and smaller conatiners of diluted muriatic acid, with and without disolved copper
Second: Too much copper creates patches of coppery sheen on the metal instead of rust.
Third: Before and after 1 treatment of diluted muriatic acid on a piece that previously had copper deposits.
Fourth: Using sawdust to hold the acid. Worked ok, but the red sawdust stained the paint.
Fifth: Nice rust!