Utilizing Resources, Glass Arrow Heads

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Tags: Utilizing Resources,Glass Arrow Heads

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back in the woods [Music]

afternoon guys Dave came by the Pathfinder school what I want to do today was I want have a little discussion about napping and napping class in general you know my mentality tells me where my survival sense tells me if that's what you want to call it that you know in a long-term survival scenario especially in this day and age flint is not going to be an easy commodity to be had it's not going to be very easy to find you'd be lucky to find a shard that's good enough to strike your flint and steel striker with quartz will be easier to find in flint most likely-- in most areas the United States so Napa Balma Tyrael to make arrowheads and things with it's probably not going to be very common at all what is going to be very very common is a glass so if you're gonna practice a skill like napping arrowheads you might as well do it for free go out in the woods and find some glass bottles and get after it with some handmade tools you don't have to use antler but you can you can use antler you can use nails you can use copper there's a lot of tools that can be made very cheaply to nap with that are very common man and napping glass arrowheads those things are very very effective don't ever think they're not obsidian is volcanic glass lots and lots and lots of animals can be killed the glass arrowheads yes you might break it on the first shot but you're just as likely to break a an arrowhead on the first shot that's made out of obsidian or made out of Flint or made out of shirt as well so remember that because I think it's an important lesson to understand that we should be practicing with the resources that will be available to us when this situation comes glass will be available it goes back to that 12-gauge mentality of what's gonna be available 12-gauge 22 that's going to be available well glass is gonna be everywhere Flint's not stay with me guys we'll get started okay so here's a couple of glass bottle bottoms I've picked up out of the woods and it's no telling what these things are one of the things that I really look for is when I'm looking for glass to make arrowheads with and this is the best medium for you this is what you're gonna find if you're not gonna come across a bunch of Flint to make arrowheads with near as often as you're gonna come across glass in a world that we live in now where people just throw trash in the woods that will devices everywhere both of these bottles are probably old but what I look for is I don't want too much of a crown on the inside I've got a convex bottom here but I have to look at the other side too because I'm not to build up convexity so the more indention I have here or the more concave that bottom is the worse off I'm going to be because I've got to build convexity in the long run to make this a good point and that's important to understand all right so the first thing we've got to do is we've got to break all this edge off of this bottom we can do that with a variety of tools from some type of copper and this is just a piece of copper pipe that's been filled with lead I've got a wooden handle in it and a bolt through it to make a bopping device or a pressure flaking device you could use a piece of antler for that works very well it's also or you can just use rocks all of those things will work they just all take practice to understand how to manipulate them because everything acts a little bit different the last is a good medium to practice with because glass will actually break a lot easier than then Flint will so that is a two-fold issue first of all it's a good thing because it's easier to flake the Flint bad thing about it is it's also easier to break than Flint which means it's easier to make mistakes and break an entire piece that you've been working on for you know 20 or 30 minutes so you just really have to kind of take your time with this stuff to keep them breaking it right now what we've got to do is we've got to get this edge off of here you can see this kid Cody Isle fractures right here we've got to get that edge broken down so that we can get an apical edge on this thing we could get us in place where we can break that bubble over one time we'd be doing something okay we're getting there you see we can we're breaking it down to the edge but we still haven't busted over this other side yet we've got to get to that point before we're gonna be able do anything and we just really got to take our time so we don't break this thing it's hard to say how old this piece of glass is out of the woods could be a little bit more fragile than glass is today it's probably a piece of antique glass from the looks of it doesn't really have many markings on it they're very blurry most of your newer glasses got some pretty easy-to-read markings on it the other thing that makes me think this might be an antique bottle is the glass is in a real uniform this edge over here is a lot thicker than this edge is so I think that this is probably an antique bottle which is okay just means we got to be a little more careful with it just can't get one to quit go over the top of this edge very easy and that's the key to making this happen I'm kind of flatten it out a little bit now to try to force one to break over the edge and it's still not quite coming over the top there that's alright we'll get there that was a pretty good breakout right there but it still broke pretty flush okay

well let's kind of a break this thing out sometime just see what we got and the braiding just means that you are polishing it down a little bit and exposing platforms so you have something an app against but it also makes them stronger so that when you push against them they don't just crush a lot of napping is just evaluating the piece that you're napping and understanding what you have to do next to make it work we've got to get convexity here you can see we've got a concave bottom we've got a convex top to make this a good flying Arrowhead it has to be convex on both sides you know and it also has to be fairly thin and that's something that I see a lot of people will show an arrowhead and they'll say look at this Arrowhead I made and it'll be really nice shaped but looking at it from this side is the key to a good arrowhead if that thing you know it can be as nice looking as it wants to right here when you flip it this way if it's this wide it's not going to fly right on your arrow remember that you're making arrowheads that should be 100 to 125 grains and weight that's a pretty small Arrowhead for a self bow or survival bow you can't put some monstrous piece of rock on there and expect to get any distance out of it so you really got to be careful with that okay now you see how those broke over the top that's what we needed to happen right there that was really what we needed to happen because now that's gonna allow us to go around here one time make a pass like that and we'll have some platforms to work with when we go back and do this again from the other side I'll show you what I mean by that in a minute okay let's bring this thing up now now we're gonna do is we're gonna take some flakes off the other side up to now we've been banging on this side driving flakes here now we want to drive flakes dis direction because what we want to do is we always want to try to take our flakes from below the center line of our piece okay so if we're looking at this piece just straight on okay we know that this area right here that we just abraded is all below the center of this piece so that's where we should be driving our first flakes off so we'll just break that up real good and then get our hand pad our piece of rubber here and you can make this piece of rubber out of a tire plenty of them in the woods and all you're doing is trying to give yourself a channel to pop flakes off

now you could use a nail for this as well doesn't have to be necessarily a piece of antler or a piece of copper it could be a steel nail you use nails all the time now you can see how we're starting to pop some flakes off of this thing the advantage to using a piece of rubber like this giving yourself a channel is generally you can drive a longer flake that way not always but generally okay what I've got in my hand now is called the easy stick and basically you see like to take a nail and put it in a longer flexible branch or he could actually tuck it into his side and get pressure to push flakes off copper works really good on to last and you can see you know where I'm at some of these flakes are long some of them are short but what we got to concentrate on is getting this side flaked off but we had to take flakes off this side first remember because of our centerline issue so let's a braid this thing down now and see where we're at on our centerline and see if we have to take another pass at that same side or whether we can start knocking flakes off the other side yet because the other side what we're going to have to get to to get convexity over there okay take a look at this thing here now you can see you know we're still to the point we really can't take any flakes off this other side yet because we've still got we're still below center line so we don't need to pop another real flakes off of this side and that's okay when that happens you just continue on and you do it so we'll pop another rough flakes off that side all the way around and hopefully that will bring our center line down to where it needs to be [Music]

you can hear that thing popping usually when it pops like that and you got a pretty good flake you don't hear that pop and you probably didn't get a very good flake

and he's got to keep rotating it around taking those flakes off a little bit of time till we get what we need okay we're going around taking another one off now another row pop this off here we go okay now let's abrade it again and see what we end up with I think we're getting to the spot we needed to be here real quick like we've got a couple places that are still high now we're getting to the point we can start taking some flakes off below center line over here and that's a good thing but we've got a couple places right here we need to address first and get those off of there so working on completely on that on the side when the time comes okay that's looking pretty good now when we look at this piece now these ridges or platforms or below centerline now we can push flakes off this side and start trying to get some convexity built up over here

that's important

yeah pop-pop it means you're doing something right usually generally speaking anyway let me hear that crush that before it pops that usually means your platform crushed underneath you you probably didn't get a very good flake on that one

got a contrary spot here I'm gonna have to work on we got a contrary spot that's okay just gonna have to knock one flake off the other side I think to raise that platform up or it needs to be okay yeah that's just the guys who need to be to get that knock down on the other side okay we're getting somewhere now we've got some flakes starting to run in here but to get convexity we'd have to get those flakes to go all the way across on the on the concave side and we haven't got that yet we pretty much got them all the way across on the convex side but now we've got to get some across here and remember you know this Arrowhead is only going to be probably you know three quarters of an inch wide by maybe an inch and a quarter long when you're done so you really got to get these flakes and run along and fast because you got to get some meat off this thing it looks like we're gonna be taking some more flakes off this other side here in just a second so we'll braid it up and we'll go from there

okay guys we're getting there now we've got them running toward the middle I hope you guys can see that we still got that letter A right in the middle so we haven't gotten rid of that yet we haven't got all the way to the middle but on this side you can steer just a little spot right there everything else is to the middle but we still don't have that convexity that we're looking for on both sides so again you know you've got to take your flakes below center line most time to a break this thing up against see what we're at right now it looks like we're doing good at staying below center line here so it continually knocked flakes off this flat side and try to get it rounded up and that's a good thing as that's really what we need to do

now you notice I'm putting my hand on the back of that piece and when I just saw it I'm going to take a flick off that platform I'm supporting the back of that thing I'm just pushing in and down I'm pushing in and then I'm popping sideways in pop in sideways that is going to give you the best chance of running long flakes no I see we got rid of that eh that last flake went straight across the middle there and that a is now gone that's good that's a step in the right direction now let's kind of evaluate this thing for a minute here now we've got flakes clear across this thing never be afraid to a braid you know it till you're finishing your piece that's sometimes that'll help you evaluate things and slow you down and help you think about what you're doing okay now we've got ourselves in a position where we can start taking some off of this side that's really convexed because we started to get this flattened out now now we want to take some chunks off this side and we've got some areas that are below centerline we can do that with now that's important too even though it's already convex on that side we really need to lose some of the thickness

now we got started valuing some things here and see where we need to take meat off at now we're going to be a little bit more selective about where we push flakes off of because we need to start running them in the areas where we need them to get rid of material and not only don't

see those two great big flakes it just came out right there that took a lot of thickness out of the backside of that and that's what we need there's another big flake that came off right there that's what we're looking for constantly evaluating what you're doing and looking at your piece is what's important now we're getting a lot thinner and that's what it's all about now when you start looking at the shape of this arrowhead a lot of times what I'll do is I'll use what's called so it's a raking device basically it's just a flattened piece of copper and basically what you can do with that is you can use that to kind of bring up some of your edges and you can also use it as a shaping tool and really that's what I want to start doing a shape in this piece now I'm getting it into Arrowhead shape and start building up some symmetry of the piece that's important okay you can see what I'm doing I'm starting to build symmetry in my piece and while I'm doing that what that's doing is that's bringing my platforms down again to where I can take off the thicker side like I need to so all of this stuff is important and it's all steps in the process I'm not making a particular style or type of Arrowhead here

this tool up to break your edges down a little bit it gives you buys you a lot when it comes to bringing up platforms from one side of the other to kind of help you get where you need to go so to speak to get thickness off of one side or the other you just got to be careful you don't do this when the glass is too thick or you'll snap it right off okay I'm pretty happy with that shape that we've got going on right there obviously our points going to be up here but right now what we've got to do is we've got a thin this thing out some more now we've got two where we can do that we need to braid death and really concentrate on worst place to come off of now so that we spend this piece out like I said you know arrowheads can be pretty from the front and ugly from the side and the center of the arrow that is the better it's going to cut the thicker it is the more you're going to get you know just one force trauma okay

now as when we started get start to kind of get jittery because now you've got a lot of work into something like this and if you mess it up now you mess it up so every flake that we take off here now is important and we got to watch it every one of them you see how deep those are going into into the middle of that piece those are good thinning flakes but the thinner you get this thing the easier it is to break it to so you got to think about that

and being real careful just trying to take a little a little bit to the time off it here if it don't want to break I'm not forcing it to you I can tell you and brother take something off of it with affliction then just try to force it off and have it break on me now okay so now what I'm really doing is I'm going down through here and just taking very very fine sharpening flakes off of the edge supporting it from the back all the time

so it doesn't break not worry about this edge being sharp or this edge being sharp that's where I'm going to notch it what I'm worried about is this edge right here

and these are very very very flying fine separation flakes all these really are you can see this pieces of glass popping off of there's real small Tonko deal fractures pop up flake off of there right there just to make sure it's not too thick right there I wanna notches sometimes that can cause you this you I can reach in there with this antler flaker or with this easy stick I can reach in there pretty good as you can see with that you can see how I reached right up in there pop that out now we're gonna do the same thing on this other side okay now we're going to notch this side

okay it's not too bad see if I can zoom in on that for you okay there's my finger beside it so you can kind of see the size of it it's a little bit out of symmetry I can work on that just a little bit over on this side probably trimming this down that cemetery a little bit better right there the more you look at these things the more you'll want to mess with them the more you mess with them the more chance to take a break in them I think I'm gonna have to call that good it's nice and thin plenty of surface area to cut good half thing right here if I pop a flake right off this backside here that would make it easier to haft by pushing in and down nice try want to chance that looks like there's a platform there but it could be a broken Arrowhead if any dude okay that's it I'm done messing with it a little bit of a channel right there it's a little half good you know I'm pretty happy with that start out with a beer bottle and you end up with that you're in pretty good shape that will definitely kill animals hope you guys enjoyed this video on Knapp and glass it's not the first video I've done nap on a glass Arrowhead but I think it's important to understand to realize that we should be practicing with the materials that are available to us glass is going to be very prevalent flint is not so don't wait until you can find flint to learn Knapp go out and get you some bottles go get some glass start napping and having fun with it learn that skill putting the dirt time now so that you have it and when you make your bow if you decide to go that way you can make glass arrowheads to go with your arrows and you're already in business without having to worry about looking for Flint or Church

thanks guys I appreciate your support I appreciate your views I appreciate everything you do for me for my family for my business and for all the Pathfinder affiliates we thank you very much and I'll be back as soon as I can you