Rock hunting on vacation!

When ever my family goes on vacation, I always am on the lookout for potential knapping resources. This year we traveled to the Upper Penninsula, and specifically centered most of our vacation around the Houghton area in the Keweenaw. We found two sources of chert and two sources of slag glass. I don't have any pictures of the first chert and slag glass gathering adventures, but the second two I do.

Here I am picking up a small cobble of slag at a beach. Since it has been worn by the waves for at least several decades, it looks like a normal, rounded rock.

Picked up. This glass is translucent and comes in two colors, deep purple/gray and dark green.

Looking in chilly Lake Michigan.

Looking for chert near the town of Isabella.

A mix of limestone and chert.

The total haul.

Beach slag on left and center, black slag upper right, and chert far right.

Chert below, slag far left and above.

In all I got somewhere between 60-80 pounds, a good haul. A special thanks to my family for their help!

GLTAG Atlatl Fishing Expedition

On Saturday at GLTAG, Bob Berg decided to lead an atlatl fishing expedition. The basic plan was to construct two homemade catamarans from canoes. Me and my dad eagerly jumped in on the idea, we figured that it would be a once-in-a-lifetime event. So we presented our willingness to help to Bob, who happily sent us to cut down several spruce poles three to four inches in diameter. We used a machete and saw to bring them down, then a large knife to trim the branches. These each were cut into two, giving us a total of four poles. We then lashed then canoes together, a task handled mostly by my Dad, whose memory of lashing techniques was fresher than mine.

The next step was putting the shooting platforms (two on each catamaran) for the atlatlists to stand on. Safety harnesses were added to ease the amount of balancing the thrower would have to do. These were essential as I would later find out. 

On the catamaran pictured, we added a torch holder with twenty rolls of birch bark to burn. Along with the torch, a shield was erected to protect the eyes of the thrower directly behind torch. After that, we worked on building harpoons for the fishing expedition until the evening.

I am the thrower on the left. As you can see, the torch was quite effective, we could see to the bottom of the bay.

Alas, no fish were seen. The carp will live to see another day. We had a great experience and I will remember this all my life.

Working on tanning

As I have had four deer hides in the freezer for several years, it was definately time to tan them. Here I am de-graining the hide; which is removing the hair and one layer of skin. I am using my bow-scaper hafted in a stick,using a pushing motion.

More summertime stuff

First up, my best turkeytail from that really nice hornstone. Not super thin or anything but still okay for the type.

A little snyders from heated burlington chert. Nice and thin too.

A hornstone snyders point. I need to rework the tip, it "leans" a little to the right.

A dalton-hemphill from heated burlington chert. I really like the inclusion in the base.