This afternoon I treated myself to two of the larger slabs brought back from Barmston. The flint isn’t as good as I remembered, or the pieces worked so far aren’t. The first one worked well with the hard hammer, but it had a very hard seam in the centre that disrupted the soft hammer blows. That one ended up in the waste flint pile.
The above two photos are of the second flat tablet, and it worked a lot better than the first. I was able to get a good rough out without any major endshock, all good.
And on this side that has worked. The flint fractured approximately according to plan, the edge is sharp and I am happy with the shape.
Flip it over and that’s when you spot the step fractures. That they are all on one side is, I think, something to do with how I work each surface differently, but I am not sure actually how I work it differently.
I think it may be to do with the initial turning of the edge, and by doing so I get a way in, but inevitably the angle is better on one side than the other.
Consequently I get to do all the nice stuff on the good angle side, and then have lots of step fracture action on the other when trying to bring the second face into line but without the suitable angles. That’s my current theory anyway, and fortunately I have quite a few blocks left to play with, and find out if I am right. Watch this space…
