Knapping like a Rhino

Recent Indian points, detail of rhino

Its been a pretty repetitive few days of knapping Recent Indian points.  I put in a long day yesterday to finish up the points that I need to fill all of the Recent Indian jewelry in this spring's wholesale orders.  I knapped 50 points from core to flake to blank to corner-notched and signed point in about 3 days.  Its a nice round number, so maybe its worth keeping track of it.  I suppose that the time was broken down something like this:

• 1/2 day making flakes from cores and bifacial cores - percussion
• 1 1/2 days knapping blanks - mostly pressure, some percussion
• 1 day finishing and notching blanks - pressure flaking

I promised myself that if I got all the points finished before Friday morning I could make them into a rhino.  There are 17 small points included from last week's knapping for a total of 67 points.  Sixty-six in the rhino and one in the tick bird.

Temporary rhino mosaic made from Little Passage and Beothuk Recent Indian points

Detail of Burial 34 by Lori White

Other than the rhino mosaic, I was also trying to plow through all the knapping that I would need to do so that I could have a stretch of non-knapping days to give my shoulder a break.  Pressure flaking big batches of chert points in the spring plays havoc on my left shoulder.  I have a truckload of tricks to help with the soreness including ice, pressure, Ibuprofen, exercise and knapping with an Ishi stick, but one numb shoulder has just become part of my knapping routine.  The most annoying part is that its not a common knapping injury, most other knappers that I've talked to who experience joint pain have it lower in their arms, in the wrist or elbow.  I can't even console myself with the thought that I'm building a useful comparitive skeleton for later study, its too atypical.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast