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Knapping Arrowheads From Glass Part 1

Description

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Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bug Out,Bushcraft,Scouts,Scouting,Primitive,Primitive Skills.Traditional,Archery,Bone,Stone,Tools,Self Reliance,Navigation,Orienteering,Tracking,Trekking,Camping,Backpacking,Hiking,Tents,Campfire,Fire,Wool Blanket,Kit,Emergency Preparedness,Spear,Hunting,Cooking,Fishing,Game Cleaning,Meat preservation,Nature,Naturalist,Trapping,Traps,Primitive Traps,Handdrill,Bowdrill

Video Transcription

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well got a big pile of broken glass and bottles here guys and look we're gonna take advantage of that I'll show you how in just a moment all right guys I don't know if you can hear this wind or not but we got 40 50 mile an hour winds blowing through here today I just showed you some footage there it's not gonna go some bottles that work now the woods they're abandoned we just trash pop somebody's old homestead probably or somebody dumped something it was typical nowadays you can find trash by anywhere you go it took cull pieces bottle bottoms and broke them off and I'm gonna show you what we can do with those right now okay now I've got this bottle bottom here and I've got this thing here is just a piece of copper stock is all this is about five inches long and it's just been nosed off at the front the grinding wheel and all I'm really doing now is trying to get this thing shaped into a semicircle you don't have to hit this glass very hard at all and I'm almost just going straight into it with a little bit of downward pressure keeping the glass away from me now it's good idea to wear safety glasses when you're doing this stuff plus if you haven't haven't before I just want to get that thing good and round start off with a get the jagged edges so that they're they'll get this nice flat edge right here I want to get rid of that definitely don't want that on there so I want to get rid of that pretty quick like okay so all I'm trying to do right now is just kind of shape this thing and do a round shape you can see it's got a little bit of a convexity to the back of it and that's the way most bottle bottoms are no less of that you can find it better off you're gonna be you don't want that real deep convex to them because they're a pain and all I'm trying to do right now is just get a series of small flakes with this little copper billet here and get it in a good round shape I've still got this problem here I got to take care of right here and we're gonna try to make an arrow out of this glass bottle Bob okay what I'm gonna do now is I've got this pressure flickering all this is just a piece of del Ron with a copper nail in it and you can use copper you can use aluminum and you steal it really doesn't matter you can use antler for that matter all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna zigzag back and forth knocking flakes off this thing going back to one side back to the other side back to one side back to the other side till I get like a sawtooth edge all the way around this thing to build up some platforms to take some flakes that you can see I don't know if you can see it because it's a clear glass there's already a couple flakes coming off this convex side as I'm going around that's what I'm wanting to accomplish anyway and I just want to get a good uniform working edge that looks like a sawtooth on there so I can start taking some bigger flakes off this piece okay we've got our edge about where we want it now let's start doing some actual napping you just dressed our edge kind of hard to see this stuff that clear glass if you can find colored glass that works a lot better you'll be able to see a lot better and see things a lot better I couldn't find any colored glass to this demonstration so I'm just gonna use clear glass but beer bottle bottoms work fine for this too if you find the right ones so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna work on starting to get some flakes going across this piece and deep into the center of this piece and I'll show you how we do that in just a second next thing we want to do is we use a piece of sandstone for this or we can just use like a broken piece of grinding wheel which is what this is and just want to dress these edges up get the sharp edges off so we can see the actual platforms that we're gonna use there a minute let's start taking flakes off this thing with let's go around one side one direction for now and go around the other side and the opposite direction for right so all the way around the piece just clean it up get it so it's not sharp anymore I don't know how well you can see this I'm hoping that you can see it pretty well but edges like this is what you want and the spots that are low like this that's a platform you can strike on that clap

that platform right there with this tool and push a flake off the bottom side that's what we're gonna do and we're just gonna go back and forth again we're gonna hit all the platforms on one side hit all the platforms on the other side going the opposite direction and I'll show you how that's done in just a second okay I'm hoping that you're gonna be able to see this where these flakes are coming off on this side and the way I'm doing that I'm just putting this in my hand basically just like this and there's possitive below the center line of the piece right here I'm basically just pushing in and straight down to take a flake off just like that in and down

there's a nice flick popped right off right there okay that's what I'm trying to do I'm trying to get all those spots there below center line on one side first then I'll go around to the other side okay now we've got is I hope you can see this but we've got flakes all the way around this convex side that's what we wanted to do first let's try to flatten that out some and get rid of that convexity so we're going to get another pass to get into the middle of this thing now we're just going to take a little short series of flakes off this flat side so that we can come back and attack this curve side again you don't want your arrowheads to have curvature in them unless it's on both sides evenly because you're going to run into problems with Aero flight any projectile it's controlled by its aerodynamics so when you see YouTube videos of arrowheads that are made out of glass that are still got the curve in them put in the bottle those are never gonna fly right they're never gonna be accurate so what we're trying to do here to show you how to do it right okay okay we got flakes now in this flat side about half way around we got a area right here we don't have any flakes that's what we're gonna work on now I see a couple spots here I can take flakes off where I got these little platforms that's we're gonna work on right now

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About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

Here you can explore the world of survival knives, survival kits and simple tips on outdoor self-reliance. We are always learning and enjoy passing on the knowledge we acquire.

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