Elfshot: Sticks and Stones

Thule Harpoon - Who were the Thule?

2009-12-09T09:41:00.014-03:30

I'm working on a Thule harpoon this week. The Thule were the ancestors of the Inuit and they moved rapidly into the Eastern Arctic from the west in the 12th or 13th century AD. The culture and technology they brought with them was unlike anything before them. Bob McGhee makes some good arguments that they were drawn eastward rapidly and suddenly by the opportunity to trade with the Norse in Greenland. The Norse wanted furs and ivory which the Thule could supply in abundance in exchange for much coveted iron, copper, and bronze.

I have a personal and professional interest in the Palaeoeskimo -- the people the Inuit call "Tunit" -- who lived in the Arctic before the Thule Migration, but I love the opportunity to work on Thule reproductions as well. They moved eastward during a slightly warmer time in the Arctic and much of their technology is dedicated to open water sea mammal hunting of everything from seals and walrus all the way up to Bowhead whales. They brought marvellous new machines with them, including large and small boats (Umiaks and Kayaks), bows and arrows, snow houses, bow drills, dogs and sleds, and range of fantastically intricate harpoons for every situation.

The harpoon that I'll be working on is based on ethnographic and archaeological examples from Labrador. Similar styles were found throughout the Arctic and I do go to Baffin Island and Greenland resources to help fill in the blanks. I'll talk more about what makes these harpoons such unique and interesting machines as I work on the current reproduction. In the meantime, here's a peak at one I did in 2006 for the Gateway to Labrador Visitor Centre in L'Anse au Clair.

There is a lot of Thule and Inuit archaeology being done in Labrador these days by researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland. You can read more about the Arctic, Thule, and Tunit in these books by Canadian Archaeologist Bob McGhee:

The Last Imaginary Place, 2005
The Ancient People of the Arctic, 1996

Photo Credits:
First-Fifth: Tim Rast
Sixth: Lori White

Photo Captions:
First: Thule House at Radstock Bay, 2008
Second: Elder Jamesie Mike explaining the house to Adventure Canada passengers.
Third: Elfshot Thule reproduction whalebone snow knife. This knife is based on Labrador examples and is in use by interpreters at The Rooms.
Fourth: Elfshot Thule reproductions, slate ulu and bone needle on permanent exhibit at the Gateway to Labrador in L'Anse au Clair.
Fifth: Elfshot Thule Harpoon reproduction. Composite photo of harpoon on permanent exhibit at the Gateway to Labrador in L'Anse au Clair.
Sixth: Photographing a house floor at Snack Cove, Labrador, 2003.

Digging Out

2009-12-07T09:37:00.006-03:30

Its a digging out day in St. John's. We had our first big snowfall of the season with 38 cm blowing in and sticking around. That's a short cubit, if you are reading somewhere without the metric system. We've got the car to free and a path to the workshop to dig out. Compared to lots of people we don't have a big area to shovel, so I really can't complain too much, and until the winter storm season leaves in the spring we'll be defending our parking space and the workshop path against infilling.

The truth is I find the winter shovelling season kind of enjoyable. I've decided to let heavy snow shovelling days count against running days this winter. I've switched to the treadmill entirely now, but the novelty has lost lots of its shine. Shovelling seems much more like exercise than mowing the lawn and I really like the strategy of it all. Planning out the piles of snow is just the tip of the iceberg. There is the psychological warfare that goes on up and down the street as everyone with on street parking defends their territory. Establishing your parking space early and maintaining it throughout the winter is as necessary for on street parkers as scratching open a breathing hole is for seals. People looking for a parking space will tend to avoid a well cared for and maintained parking spot because its an obvious sign that someone is using that space. Its like smelling another dog's yellow snow.

But its not an entirely defensive strategy - there is plenty of room for diplomacy and a carefully executed preemptive shovelling of a neighbor's sidewalk can establish an important ally and get them on your side early in the battle. Which is especially useful later in the season when you need them to stop the surly teenager in their family from shovelling their snow into your space!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Looking out the front door
Middle: Looking out the back window
Bottom: Halfway up the mother-in-law door already!

Farm Craft - Braiding

2009-12-04T10:53:00.007-03:30

I'm back home from my trip to Alberta and Saskatchewan. I'm just trying to get back into some kind of routine again before Christmas. I have a few orders to work on and clients and potential clients to contact from my days off. I've promised to send pictures back to family from the trip and need to organize all my trip pictures while they are still fresh in my memory.

Growing up on the farm I can remember my dad working with his hands every day. Welding, fencing, carpentry, feeding the animals, working on machinery, etc. I can remember my dad in his shop taking the loose binder twine that came off the hay bales left over from feeding the cattle and braiding them into ropes. He showed me how to braid a loop in one end and how to add new strands into the braid to keep it going forever. In the end, these big ropes would go on my swingset and I would climb and swing on them for hours. Here's the most recent binder twine rope, with a tire swing for the grandkids. He taught me simple three strand braids and I'd practice on anything - horse's manes, shoe laces, twizzlers and I still use that same braid in my work when I braid a looped sinew line for a harpoon.

On the most recent trip, I brought back this riding bridle and reins that my dad made decades ago from recycled electrical wire. Its flat braided from pairs of wire in 3 strand and 4 strand braids. There were some loose ends on it when I found it hanging in the horse barn, so dad spent an hour the night before I flew home working on it, weaving the wire back in on itself and adding a missing ring. You can see some of the loose ends around the bit in the standing photo, but its very neatly finished now.

Although Dad stressed that it was only repaired for display, not for riding. Which shouldn't be a problem, I love having something that my dad crafted with his own hands on display in my home.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Caption:
First: Dad making some last minute repairs to the bridle before I fly back to Newfoundland in the morning.
Second: A tire swing with braided twine rope for the grandkids.
Third: Dad holding the bridle and reins he braided out of recycled electrical wire.
Fourth: Detail of the reins attached to the bit.
Fifth: Detail of the bridle

Remembering

2009-11-11T09:27:00.008-03:30

When I think about Remembrance Day, I think about my dad's dad, Gustav Rast. He enlisted with the Polish army in World War I. At the time it was a good opportunity for a young man. He joined because they would send regular pay back to his family. Although living in Poland, grandpa was German and his brothers joined the German army, but grandpa didn't like how strict the Germans were so he joined the Polish forces instead. However, the fighting didn't end for Gustav when the Great War ended in 1918. Poland found itself an occupied country and grandpa continued fighting against the Bolsheviks between 1918 and 1921 for Poland's Independence from Russia.

Even when the fighting was over and Grandpa sold his team of horses for passage on a ship to Canada in the 1920s the war never left him. After a year of saving, he sent money back to Poland to bring his young wife and 3 small children (they had five more later) over to Saskatchewan. He exchanged letters for many years with his brothers who continued to live in Germany after the War, but when World War II broke out Grandpa destroyed all those correspondences. Grandpa didn't talk to his kids about his experiences in the First World War at that time, that would come later.

During World War II grandpa became very paranoid. German immigrants in Canada weren't allowed to own guns. Grandpa had a .22 rifle that he used for hunting rabbits to feed the family. He wrapped it in tar paper and took it out on to the prairie to hide in a rock pile until after the war. His oldest son, Erwin, followed grandpa to see where the gun was hidden. Erwin would have been 12 or 13 and he took his seven or eight year old brother Otto out to the rock pile to show him the gun. Erwin convinced Otto that since he knew where the gun was now he would get in trouble if his parents ever found out that Erwin was sneaking out and playing with it. Eventually Erwin broke the gun and threw it away. When grandpa went to retrieve the .22 after the war and found it missing he spent years wondering who found it and was convinced that the government was watching him. Erwin died in a car accident when he was still a teen and Otto didn't want to tarnish his memory with his father so he never told Gustav the truth about the rifle.

Grandpa didn't talk about the war until much later, but he spoke of it often after my grandma died. My earliest memories of my grandpa are of him sitting at his kitchen table in Saskatchewan talking to my dad in English and German about the War. It was over 60 years later and those memories were still right on the surface for him. He talked a lot about his friends and how random it was between who lived and who died. He'd say over and over again "Where was my bullet? So many good boys got killed... where was my bullet?" In fact, he was shot on at least one occasion and he could recall listening to the two Russian soldiers standing over him debating whether or not to shoot him again. They decided to leave him there. Grandpa could understand Russian and he heard one soldier convince the other not to waste a bullet, because this one would die anyway. On that occasion the Red Cross found young Gustav and patched him up. But thinking back, grandpa carried all those wounds in his head for the rest of his life. He dwelled on all his friends being lost and the many times he was held as a prisoner of war.

On my mom's side, she lost an uncle, Leonard Johnson, in World War II. He was an observer on board an RCAF bomber and went missing on July 29, 1943 in a raid over Hamburg. Like so many Canadian families, my mom's family were left wondering for decades whatever happened to him. In the family portrait on the left, Ragna was my grandma. Leonard was missing for years, although his grave has been located since. I believe he's buried in the Netherlands. Maybe someone in my family reading this could help fill in more details on my Great-Uncle Leonard.

Edit: Leonard is buried in the British Cemetery in Hamburg, Germany.

Photo Credits:
First-Third: Family Photos
Bottom: Family Photos from Mabel Johnson's self published memoir "Yesterday Remembered"

Photo Captions:
First: Gustav Rast, my grandpa. The photo has the following caption handwritten in ink on the back: 1919 G Rast awarded the bravery award for occupying the city of Litau by Poland's army at Easter
Second: Grandma Eva and children, Erma, Otto, and Frieda in Canada 1930/31
Third: Grandpa and his friends. Grandpa is seated in the middle
Bottom: My Great Uncle Leonard Johnson, and Leonard with his siblings and parents.

Notes from Alberta

2009-12-02T00:01:00.004-03:30

Today is a travel day back from Alberta to Newfoundland. Actually, most of this trip has been travelling. Lately, when I've visited the farm that I grew up on near Vulcan, Alberta, my dad gets nostalgic for Saskatchewan. So we made a four day trip to visit his childhood home near Eatonia, Saskatchewan and then family in Regina and Weyburn. Between last Thursday and Sunday we drove 1937 km from Alberta to Saskatchewan and back again.

Dad grew up near a small town called Eatonia and I can remember visiting my grandma and grandpa Rast in their little house in town, before grandpa moved into a nursing home in Kindersley in 1985. I have some vague memories of visiting the old farm, where dad lived from 1937 until he left home at the age of 17 in 1949, but this trip was the first time I visited the farm as an adult. I was surprised by how much of farm remains, although dad was pretty disappointed by the rough shape of the house he grew up in. No one has lived there since 1965, so 45 years of abandonment has shown itself in broken windows, water damage, nesting pigeons and random vandalism. Nevertheless, I have lots of photos and some good video of dad touring through the house and the outbuildings.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Dad standing in a field near Eatonia , SK. At this spot, his mother and 3 small children spent their first winter in Canada (1929) living in a granary, piled with snow on the outside for insulation.
Bottom: Sunset at the Rast Farm at Eatonia, Saskatchewan. This was the family home from 1937-1965.

Gone Fishin'

2009-09-16T07:16:00.019-02:30

Lori's off for a few days of archaeological survey work on the Northern Peninsula. Hopefully she'll tell us all about it in the near future. The plan is to come back early next week, but if they find something, they may have to stay longer. There's potential to find some fantastic stuff, so I'm pretty jealous.

I've got a few days of cutting, grinding, and antiquing to look forward to. Yesterday was a visit to the Rooms to compare my Parks reproductions to the Inuvialuit artifacts. I didn't get to cross anything off the list, but things seem to be more or less on track.

Here's a look at a fish hook that I'm reproducing. The original (in the middle) is from Ivvavik National Park and is made from a very unsual ivory with alternating light and dark bands. There is a good chance that its some kind of tooth, most likely beluga whale. The Parks folks in Inuvik got me some beluga teeth from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans last spring to experiment with. They are definitely shaped like the fish hook, and they do have banding inside them from growth layers, but I couldn't get the right look anywhere. The bands are at the wrong angles and the beluga tooth reproductions wound up looking less like the original than using walrus ivory with tea died bands.

The fish hook has two holes at one end to attach the line to and a single larger hole at the other end for a metal or bone spike. The little copper awl artifact is the kind of thing that would have been stuck through the bottom hole to serve as the actual hook. The ivory is more of the lure. From the staining on the surface the hook was wrapped with a spiral of red string that left a pink stain on the ivory. To simulate the pink stain I found that beet juice works great. I dipped a string that was the right thickness in a little dish of beet juice and wound it around the reproductions while it was damp. The only string I had that was the right diameter was green, so you don't really get the red effect in the photos, but when you peel the dried string off after an hour or so the pink stain is there. The ivory actually has tiny indentations on the edges for the string to sit in, which makes reconstructing the string pattern that much easier.

The final bit of antiquing on these pieces will be dabbing on a bit of oil-based stain to create that brown blob in the middle of the original. I'll need to spray on a clear finish as well to seal in the beet stain. I can fade it a bit by rubbing some of the pink off, but once its at the right shade I want to seal it in and stabilize it.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top, Lori waiting for the Boss to get his field shoes on as they head out for the Northern Peninsula to do Important Scientific Research.
Second, Ivvavik Fish Hook, between two walrus ivory reproductions, in progress
Third, Beluga Whale Teeth - Fresh!
Fourth, Beet staining the reproductions

Filling Orders and Goldstone

2009-11-20T09:09:00.009-03:30

I've been trying to wrap up some loose ends before heading to Alberta for a few days next week. The house clean-up has been proceeding slowly and I've been working on filling craft fair orders, preparing quotes and invoices for clients and throwing out some particularly rancid gelatin that was forgotten during the hectic craft fair weekend. The biggest block of time has gone into preparing a wholesale order for The Rooms Gift Shop. Hopefully it will be ready for delivery later today or (more likely) tomorrow. I can pull some of the order from pieces I prepared for the craft fair, but there is so much variety in the order that I need to make several pieces from scratch.

The arrowheads hafted onto shafts in the photo are going to be hafted necklaces. I drill a hole through the wood, cut the shaft off close to the arrowhead, and string them on leather cord. I'm using some particularly nice obsidian in these necklaces and 2 of them will be for sale at The Rooms Gift Shop shortly.

There will also be a few goldstone pieces in this order. Goldstone is a manufactured material that has copper flakes suspended in glass. The process was discovered in the 17th century and patented in Italy in 1670. The reason I use it is that there were several goldstone artifacts found in the excavations at Ferryland, including gold rings and pendants. The Ferryland artifacts appear to have been hidden in 1696 when the French attacked the site. I think its interesting that this material shows up in the New World within a couple decades of its being patented in Italy.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Hafted Necklaces, still on the stalk
Bottom: Goldstone earrings and necklace, ready to be wired

Final Parks Reproductions

2009-10-26T09:24:00.007-02:30

Here's a look at the last of the Inuvialuit artifact reproductions done for Parks Canada in Inuvik. I'll post side by side group shots of artifacts and reproductions from each of the three parks in a future post.

Tuktut Nogait Bow: Tuktut Nogait National Park. This reproduction was great fun to do and although this isn't a functional bow I learned a lot about bow-making from this artifact and I still plan to make a working copy of this bow over the winter. Its made from yew. Its in two parts with a V or fishtail splice through the shorter, lower limb. Its very light and thin limbed compared to a lot of other cable backed bows that I've come across.
In each photo the artifact is shown closest to the ruler, with the reproduction on the opposite side. In the first two photos the pieces are shown belly side up, and in the third the bow's back is facing up. I've already talked a lot about making this piece in earlier posts. Finishing involved a lot of wire brushing to bring out the wood grain and match the weathered texture. The colour and texture matching came from rock dust, sawdust, water based stains, red ochre, charcoal, and burnt umber. This is a piece that will benefit from handling. The more wear and tear the reproduction gets the better it will look.

Slate Knife: Ivvavik National Park. The artifact is in the middle. This knife is a little unusual in that its chipped slate instead of ground slate. Ground slate knives may be roughly shaped by flaking, but slate isn't a very good stone for knapping. Usually slate is finished by grinding and polishing. The handle portion of the original artifact is almost completely unworked, so the chipped blade may have been a quick attempt to turn a knife shaped rock into a real knife. Slate is a pretty soft stone that likes to break apart along flat planes, which is why its so difficult to knap. Under the sawdust and woodshavings in in my workshop there are at least a dozen failed attempts at making these two knives. I finally had to go with a slate that isn't as perfect a colour match as what I was hoping, but the best look alike slate I had found refused to stay in one piece. These reproductions will be much more durable, I feel much more confident sending them off knowing that they will be able to hold up to the sort of handling they are intended for.

Antler Handle: Tuktut Nogait National Park. This is an antler socket that was extremely deteriorated. It was a challenge to reproduce because I wanted to match the flakey weathered look of the original, but at the same time have something that wouldn't fall apart being handled. There's not much point in making a reproduction of a fragile artifact that is more fragile than the original. To match the texture and colours of the piece I used layers and layers of sawdust, antler dust, whalebone shaving, and rock dust. In between the layers I'd brush with a wire brush to create the pitting and texture of the disintegrating antler. There was plenty of blowtorch in there as well.
In both photos the artifact is on the left and the reproduction is on the right.

Kayak Rib: Tuktut Nogait National Park. This was that bent wood piece that was giving me so much trouble. I finally got it to hold its shape by building a stand for it. As long as its stored in its stand there's no danger of it straightening out again. There is an interesting patch of green staining on one end which I used verdigris from the copper experiments earlier in the summer to match. It gave a very good match - I wouldn't be at all surprised if the staining on the artifact came from contact with copper.
I keep referring to this as a kayak rib, because that's what I think it is. I don't have any evidence for that other than the fact that its shaped an awful lot like a kayak rib and I'm not sure what else it might have been used for.
In both photos the artifact is closest to the ruler. I'm going to try to be more consistent in the future with my photography or artifacts and reproductions, with artifacts always below or to the left of the reproductions.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Detail of Tuktut Nogait collection comparison - more to come next time!
Second: Side by side comparison of Tuktut Nogait Bow (Artifact: Left, Reproduction: Right)
Third: Side by side comparison of Tuktut Nogait Bow limb (Artifact: bottom, Reproduction: top)
Fourth: Side by side comparison of Tuktut Nogait Bow (Artifact: bottom, Reproduction: top)
Fifth: Slate Knife, artifact in the middle, reproductions above and below
Sixth: Antler socket comparison, (Artifact: Left, Reproduction: Right)
Seventh: Antler socket comparison, (Artifact: Left, Reproduction: Right)
Eighth: Wood rib comparison, (Artifact: Bottom, Reproduction: Top)
Ninth: Wood rib comparison, (Artifact: Bottom, Reproduction: Top)

Elfshot Reproductions at the Rooms

2009-11-27T00:01:00.001-03:30

When I dropped off the gift shop order at The Rooms on Sunday, Lori and I toured through the art gallery and museum. I snapped a couple photos of past work that is on display in the Museum.

I did these 3 Palaeoindian points to help illustrate the movement of the first people north into Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is a soapstone pot sitting on a lamp stand with a smaller soapstone lamp beneath it. I made this a few years ago for a different part of The Rooms, so it was a nice surprise to see that it had found its way into an exhibit space.

Harpoon and Ballistics Gel Outtakes

2009-11-30T00:01:00.000-03:30

On the last two tests of the harpoon and gel, Lori and I took over 500 photos and videos. Many of those were action shots with 20 or 30 images making up a second or two of movement. Here's some that show things going wrong or almost working, like this mostly toggled harpoon head.

The video above is the closest we have to a showing a toggling harpoon head toggling. By this time in the experiments the gel had been stabbed 5 or 6 times and there was a pretty well defined channel running down the middle. The skin layer had also seperated and the entry hole had stretched, so the harpoon head started to back out of the hole while it was toggling. Then the camera stopped recording. In the end, the harpoon head did stay lodged, caught on one of the basal barbs and partially toggling beneath the skin.

This video illustrates two of the biggest problems with the current set-up; the wobbly target and my lousy aim. I like the size of the two litre pop bottle mold because it gives enough room for the harpoon heads to operate, but its a little too tall and skinny and is easy to knock off balance when my aim is perfectly perpendicular to the target surface. Something the size of an ice cream bucket might be more stable, but the gelatin gets opaque so fast that I think a lot of the interesting detail would be much less visible on the surface of a bigger block of gelatin. One idea to cut down on the wobble would be to find a more sturdy pop bottle sized clear container to build the model in. To help with the aiming, it might be necessary to use some sort of drill-press aparatus to guide the harpoon. That seems like less fun to me though.

Photo Credits: Lori White

Photo Captions:
Top Photo: Badly toggled harpoon head, which partially worked its way out the entry hole.
Top Video: The test strike that created the poorly toggled harpoon head in the top photo.
Bottom Video: A failed attempt with the barbed harpoon, bending and dislodging the harpoon head after breaking through the skin.

Hafted Necklaces

2009-11-25T00:01:00.001-03:30

I'm off to Alberta to visit my dad and stepmom for a few days. I set up a few pre-scheduled posts to feed to the blog while I'm away. If I'm able to make updates while I'm at the farm, I will, but if not, I've got a few short photo based posts ready to go. Here's a look at the hafted point necklaces that I showed on the stalk last Friday. Now that I have a good recipe for a durable red ochre paint, I'm thinking about introducing hafted Beothuk style points as a new product for the wholesale season next spring. Imagine these, but done in local Newfoundland chert and stained with red ochre.

Hafted Necklaces (Obsidian, Wood, Artificial Sinew, Epoxy, leather cord) : $28.75 tax inc.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions: Hafted Obsidian Necklaces

How does a Barbed Harpoon Work?

2009-11-23T11:06:00.005-03:30

The oldest style of harpoon in the world is the barbed harpoon. A harpoon is a spear-like device with a detachable head tied to a line. When the barbed harpoon head is embedded in the flesh of the prey animal, the barbs grip the tissue and the hunter has a secure line attached to it. Its similar to how a fish hook catches a fish, but its used on larger fish and sea mammals. Sometimes the hunter holds the other end of the line and sometimes the line is attached to a float that drags behind the prey, identifying its location, preventing it from escaping and exhausting it.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Maritime Archaic Indians used barbed harpoons similar to the one labelled above. They most likely used it for seal hunting. This is my best guess for how the harpoon might have looked. If you visit the Maritime Archaic exhibit at The Rooms, you'll see this label next to the Maritime Archaic Indian foreshafts like the one in this reproduction: "Whalebone foreshafts were used for sea mammal hunting. Exactly how they functioned has puzzled archaeologists for decades." That's still totally true - take all the reproductions that you see on these pages with a grain of salt. I wasn't there.

However, in my kitchen, I did finally get all of the components of the ballistic gel seal working the way they should; skin, fat, and meat. For the meat layer, I tried denser ballistics gel alone, but it wouldn't hold the harpoon head securely enough when I tried to pull it out. Next I tried lacing the dense gel with sinew threads, but the barbs just grabbed them and pulled them out like spaghetti on a fork. Finally, Lori gave me some cheese cloth, which I cut into circles and suspended at various depths in the gelatin. The loose weave was punctured by the antler harpoon head, but there was enough form to the cloth that it held together and gripped the harpoon head when I tried to pull it out. I don't think I quite have a realistic muscle consistency, but by increasing the density of the gel and adding more and more cheesecloth layers I know I'll be able to have a lot of control over the accuracy of the model.

In the tests with the barbed harpoon, we got lucky with two different views of the barbs in action. On the first attempt, my bad aim and a wobbly gelatin tower caused the harpoon to go astray and not penetrate the "meat" layer. However, the barbs snagged securely on the rawhide skin layer. In the second photo below you can even see the path the harpoon head took through the gel before being pulled back up to snag on the skin.

On the next test, the harpoon penetrated deep into the "meat" layer and through 3 of the 4 layers of cheesecloth. The "meat" had enough substance to grip the barbs of the harpoon on the way out. It held firmly enough to prove the concept and get these photos, but in actual experiments I think I'll use a denser gelatin (in this version I used 1 packet of knox gelatin for every 100ml of water) and more layers of cheesecloth.

Its interesting to note that when the harpoon head grabbed on the skin layer it used the barb closest to the line hole and when it grabbed in the "meat" it used the barb closest to the tip. There is a lot of variability in Maritime Archaic harpoon heads of this style, with anywhere from 1 to 4 barbs along one edge or both edges. That would be another interesting thing to examine in these experiments - the differences in the number and arrangement of barbs on a barbed point.

I'm loving this project - if testing the ballistics gel is this much fun, I can't wait to start actually testing the harpoons!

Photo Captions:
First & Second: Tim Rast
Third - Eighth: Lori White

Photo Captions:
First: Labelled Maritime Archaic Barbed Harpoon
Second: Label next to Maritime Archaic foreshafts at The Rooms
Third: Ballistics Gel Seal test using barbed harpoon
Fourth: Barbed harpoon head grabbing the skin layer
Fifth: You can see the trackway of the harpoon preserved in the gel!
Sixth: The barbs grabbed the cheesecloth in the meat layer!
Seventh: Its the distal barb that is doing all the work.
Eighth: You can really see the cheesecloth gripping from this angle.

What are the parts of a Toggling Harpoon?

2009-11-18T16:21:00.003-03:30

Here's a quick look at the parts of a Dorset Palaeoeskimo toggling harpoon and some of the tests to find a good ballistics gel seal to do harpoon experiments with.

This style of harpoon is used to attach a line to a seal. The hunter gets close enough to the seal to jab it with the harpoon, the harpoon head detaches and toggles beneath the skin of the seal. The hole where the line attaches to a toggling harpoon is near the middle of the harpoon head, so when the seal tries to escape, the harpoon head toggles, or turns sideways. A toggled harpoon head is bigger than the hole it made going in and is firmly embedded in the hunters prey. The line is used to haul the seal out of the water so that the hunter can finish it off.

That toggling action is one of the things I'm trying to illustrate with the ballistics gel seal. This particular video still doesn't show the harpoon head toggling, but I did learn a lot from it. One thing it illustrates is that the skin and fat layer of the ballistics gel seal work very well. They offer the right amount of resistance and are good approximations of the outer layers of a seal. The Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon heads from Newfoundland that I have modelled this harpoon on have a single line hole, and I believe that the line must have been secured to the harpoon head with a big knot of sinew on one side. On the test in the video, the sinew knot bulged out of the smooth contour of the harpoon head. It created a raised bump a couple millimetres high, but it was enough to snag on the rawhide skin. The resistance from that tiny snag was enough that the harpoon was bound up and the whalebone foreshaft broke. I learned two things. First, if I'm going to use a sinew knot to secure the line, it needs to be flush with the surface of the harpoon head and secondly, the forces involved in the experiment are great enough that things break when they go wrong. Which is also good, because examining how things break is very useful information when studying broken and discarded tools in the archaeological record.

After the foreshaft broke, I pushed the harpoon head down into the gel manually and it did toggle for me when I pulled on the line. In the photo below, you can see the gel tube suspended from the toggled harpoon head and line. The gel is still a little opaque to see everything that's going on, but you can make out a few interesting details. In the overhead shot, you can see the hole that the endblade made and the shadow of the harpoon head lying beneath the rawhide skin. In the inset shot you can see the endblade, which detached when the harpoon head toggled. It marks the depth that the toggling occurred, although the harpoon head itself squished up through the ballistics gel "fat" layer and is actually snagged just below the skin. You can see the rubbery rawhide skin flexing upward under the tension.

Photo Credits:
First, Second: Tim Rast
Video: Lori White
Third, Fourth Photo: Lori White

Photo Credits:
First: Labelled parts of a Middle Dorset Harpoon Reproduction, Elfshot 2009
Second: Showing the detached harpoon head
Third: Detail of video frame showing the sinew knot in the harpoon head line hole when it grabbed the raw hide.
Video: Testing the ballistics gel. The foreshaft breaks when the harpoon head snags on a knot in the sinew
Fourth: The harpoon head toggling in the Ballistics gel.

Harpoon Foreshafts and Gelatin Seals

2009-11-04T11:03:00.002-03:30

Between the leftover Halloween candy and visions of giant gummy seals I hardly slept at all last night. I've been thinking a lot more about the ballistic gel seal idea.

I think that in order to properly test both barbed and toggling harpoons the gel seal would have to have three layers. Skin, blubber, and meat. I think rawhide would work for the skin layer, and two layers of gel could serve as the blubber and meat layers. The meat layer would be a dense ballistic gel and the blubber layer would be a gel made with more water, so it would be a little squishier. If you aren't squeamish, you can see the layers that make up a seal here: culture camp how to butcher a seal demo.

I've been using Knox Gelatine (its spelled that way on the box) to make the ballistics gel. To make edible gelatin, the recipe is one packet of Knox's for 500 ml of water. I'm using about 700 ml of water and in the first batch I used 2 packets of Knox. This made jello. All it was missing was the sugar and the floating peas and chunks of ham. I remelted the gelatin by floating the tupperware in a sink full of hot water and mixed in a third pack of Knox. The 3 pack-700ml gelatin block is the one I used in these photos. It held together a little better although it still failed (the third picture in the triptych below). It might make an ok fat layer, but I think its still softer than any real animal fat. I'm melting it down again and I'll add a fourth pack. My guess now is that 4 packs of gelatin will make an alright fat layer and that I'll need at least 5 or 6 packs to the same volume of water to make a dense enough muscle layer.

One thing that this avenue of thinking has illustrated for me is the functional difference between the long foreshaft on the barbed harpoon and the short foreshaft on the toggling harpoon. They start to make sense if you think of a seal in three layers, with skin and fat near the surface and meat somewhere deep inside. The toggling harpoon head works in the fat near the skin while the barbed harpoon needs to grip the denser muscle tissue deep inside the animal. The different lengths of the foreshafts would deliver the harpoon heads to the appropriate depths inside the seal.

The harpoon reproductions on the left are two different cultures, and all of the tools made by the Palaeoeskimos were smaller than the Maritime Archaic equivelant, so its kind of like comparing apples and oranges. However, the Maritime Archaic Indians also made toggling harpoons, and the foreshafts for those are much shorter than the foreshafts on the barbed points. One recovered at Port au Choix with the Maritime Archaic toggling harpoon head still attached was only 18 cm long. Out of context, it could have passed for a large Palaeoeskimo foreshaft (the foreshaft in my Palaeoeskimo reproduction is 12 cm long). The Maritime Archaic made both barbed and toggling harpoon heads and they made both long and short foreshafts, which makes sense when you consider where each of these kinds of harpoon heads would work best inside the body of the marine mammals they were hunting.

Maybe an experiment built around foreshaft lengths would be a good excuse for stabbing blocks of ballistic gel with harpoons. I'm thinking about other tests involving barbed versus toggling harpoons and stone endblades versus self-bladed harpoon heads. Thank you everyone for commenting on the last post - keep the ideas coming.

Photo Credits:
First, Third, Fifth: Lori White
Second, Fourth: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First, Stabbing a gelatin block with a barbed harpoon head
Second, Knox' gelatin and the container of gel
Third, Stabbing rawhide and gel with a Dorset harpoon. The glass is there to give the harpoon head room to toggle, but it didn't happen.
Fourth, Maritime Archaic barbed harpoon, top, and Dorset Palaeoeskimo toggling harpoon, below
Fifth, still stabbing gelatin

Who Made the Dinosaurs?

2009-03-01T12:19:00.009-03:30

I watched Bill Maher's movie Religulous over the weekend. One of the more memorable segments was a visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. One of the star attractions of the museum are the 80 lifesize dinosaur sculptures and animatronics shown alongside human beings. There were saddles on triceratops and animatronic T. Rex's running behind animatronic human children. The thing that I found remarkable was the quality of the dinosaurs. It made me think - who made these things? Where do you find the designers capable of creating hyper realistic Cretaceous-era dinosaurs, but at the same time are willing to install them on a model of Noah's Ark?

I met a guy at a dinosaur egg museum in southern Alberta who was an interpreter at the site and a model maker. He needed to know a lot about biology and palaeontology to create lifelike models of the dinosaurs found at the site. The creative side of his job went hand-in-hand with the science of the site. You can't make those models without knowing a lot about dinosaurs and you can't know alot about dinosaurs without knowing that they lived millions of years before human beings.

I'm an archaeologist, so the reproductions that I make for museums have nothing to do with dinosaurs (at least in every museum in the world other than the Creation Museum). I've been fortunate that I have only been approached by organizations who I trust to accurately represent the materials that I provide them with. The only time I can recall turning down work from an ethical standpoint was when a tourism operator wanted to buy reproductions so that he could plant them on beaches and make spontaneous "discoveries" when he pulled up with groups of kayakers. But declining that contract only cost me a couple hundred dollars -- I can't imagine what a contract for producing 80 life-size dinosaurs would be worth.

Anyhow, the dinosaurs in the Creation Museum got me thinking about some of the difficult choices that makers face when we're approached to do a job. Jeff Goldblum said this in another movie about creating dinosaurs and I think it could apply to the fabricators of the Creation Museum's animatronic dinosaurs;

"your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

Have you ever had to decline a job that you could do because it was at odds with what you felt you should do?

Craft Fair Recovery

2009-11-16T10:08:00.009-03:30

The Fine Craft and Design fair went very well. My sales were on par with previous years at the Convention Centre, which I take as a big success, given the move to a new venue, the new 10-day format, the recession, and H1N1. There were lots of reasons to expect things to be down this year, but they weren't. The Arts and Culture Centre had a great atmosphere and I didn't hear from a single customer or exhibitor who didn't like the new location. I saw lots of old friends and met lots of new people. We even did a little shopping ourselves -- including this great hand forged pot rack from Green Family Forge.

One trend that was strong this year was an interest in flintknapping workshops. There was enough interest that I'm planning to do two workshops early in the new year, one on pressure flaking and one on percussion knapping. I'll post more details as they get worked out, but for now, if you are in the St. John's area and interested in learning to knap, send me an e-mail and I'll keep you posted.

Today is a bit of a slow day. The 12 hour days at the fair are long. I find it to be a big shock going from the isolation of the workshop in the weeks leading up to the fair to being immersed in crowds of Christmas shoppers for 5 days straight.

I'll slowly start re-assembling the house today. There's always a mess to clean up in the house after a craft fair because everything else leading up to the fair takes a back seat. This year the problem was compounded by the fact that Lori was sick in bed for the week and a half leading up to the fair. I was left unsupervised during that entire time and the craft fair preparation crept into every nook and cranny of the house.

Photo Credits:
First, Second: Tim Rast
Third: Lori White
Fourth, Fifth: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: Elfshot Booth at 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair
Second: Green Family Forge Pot Rack
Third: Beer Bottle to Arrowhead Workshop
Fourth, Fifth: The state of our house this morning.

Only Three Days Left!

2009-11-13T07:47:00.006-03:30

So far, the Fine Craft and Design Fair at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's has been fantastic! I'm loving the new venue and there were actually artisans in the first fair who enjoyed themselves so much during the first 5 days that they signed up to do it all over again at this week's fair!

The fair is Open 10AM to 10PM on Friday and Saturday and 10AM to 6PM on Sunday. Free Parking and Admission.

Don't forget the Flintknapping demonstration - Saturday, November 14th, 10AM to 12 Noon. Hope to see you there!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:

All: The Elfshot Booth (#512) at the 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair

Schnell Girls are Fast!

2009-05-01T08:56:00.005-02:30

Whenever I fill out paperwork in Newfoundland, the person on the other side of the desk asks where I'm from. Rast is a German name and I grew up on a farm in southern Alberta. I moved to Newfoundland in 1996. My mom was a "Schnell" from Saskatchewan -- Schnell in German means "fast" while Rast means "to rest". I think most people who know me can see that the Rast side won. In the past few years my dad has discovered a new nap between breakfast and lunch that I'm looking forward to inheriting one day.

The Tely10 Road Race takes place on July 26th this year and I'm hoping that I'll be in St. John's to participate. In this Sunday's edition of the Telegram (May 3rd) they are publishing a training schedule leading up to the race that I'm going to try to follow. I have some Schnell cousins in Saskatchewan who are very fast. Shelan and Renee Schnell have been running and winning marathons and half-marathons for the past several years. I'm just hoping to finish.

My mom (in green) wasn't a road racer, but she was fast in her own way. Dad told me a story a couple years ago from when they were courting. At the time dad was living in Alberta and mom was in Saskatchewan and dad would drive out to visit her on weekends. On one trip, mom was quiet and moody and eventually she confessed to what was troubling her; "We've been dating almost six weeks now and I don't even have an engagement ring yet." So dad had to bring a ring the next time he came out.

In a completely unrelated topic - yesterday was the 5 year anniversary of Lori and I getting our house on Craigmillar. We are celebrating with a final trip to the lawyers today (hopefully) to sign off on our new 5 year mortgage!

Photo Credits:
Top, Bottom: good question
Middle: Audio Visual Services, University of Regina

Photo Captions:
Top: Dad demonstrating how to remain a bachelor into your 40s
Middle: Renee winning a 10k race in 2005
Bottom: Color coded Schnells, Regina, Christmas 1969; Uncle Gary (blue), Aunt Janet (orange), Mom (green), Aunt Phyllis (yellow), Aunt Karen (black), Grandma Schnell (brown)

Fair and Ballistic Gel Seal Anticipation Builds!

2009-11-09T08:37:00.013-03:30

I needed to pick up some shelves and other display items for my craft fair booth yesterday and had a chance to briefly stop by the Fine Craft and Design Fair to check out the show and my booth space. This was my first time visiting the fair in the Arts and Culture Centre and I'm really excited now about joining the fair this week. The place was hopping! At 10 days, the fair is twice as long as it has ever been and the layout and auxiliary events create a big festive atmosphere. The Craft Fair fits into the space so well, that its almost like a new mall dedicated to craft has sprung up in the middle of St. John's. The show is closed Monday and Tuesday to switch over booths and re-opens on Wednesday November 11th at 4:00pm with a new set of craft producers.

But of course, the inside of my head still looks something like this:

(You can make make your own Wordle at Wordle.Net!)

I spent more time working on the ballistics gel seal model. The current version is the 3 layer pop bottle seal. There is a rawhide skin layer, the smooshy fat layer and the sinew laced meat layer. I cut the top end off the two litre pop bottle and used it for a funnel so that I could cut a relatively small hole in the bottom to fill it from. I stretched a wet rawhide skin from a soaked chew toy for dogs over the top, like a drum skin. I flipped it over and filled it up upside down. The initial gelatin pour seeped through the wet rawhide. It was kind of messy, but in the end it helped keep the rawhide rubbery and more skin like when the gelatin set. I used 5 packs of Knox gelatin for 700 ml of water for the fat layer. I did that twice, so 10 packs for 1400 ml of water would be the same thing. For the meat layer I used 7 packs for 700 ml of water and poured it in 3 stages. Between each stage I let it gel slightly and sprinkled soaked sinew strips into the mix. That gives me about 4 inches of "fat" and 2 inches of "meat".

That's as far as I've got. I'll know later today if they work and what changes need to be made.

Photo Credits:
Top, Tim Rast
Second, Wordle.Net
Third & Fourth, Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top, Earrings ready for the 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair, St. John's
Second, Wordle created using the text from the past week's blog posts
Third, Filling the ballistic gel seal. If you expand the photo you can see the sinew in the "meat" layer.
Fourth, Ready to test!

Craft Fair Update

2009-11-06T08:26:00.008-03:30

Its been a hectic week of preparation for my run in the Fine Craft and Design Fair at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's next week. I've ran into a couple of people who said that they thought the fair was this week. It is, but I won't be there until next week. It runs for 5 days this week and 5 days next week, for a total of 10 days. There are a dozen or more exhibitors attending for the full 10 days and 60 or so exhibitors attending either the first 5 days (Nov 4-8) or the last 5 days (Nov 11-15). You can see the full list of craft producers and the days they'll be attending here.

Elfshot will be there for November 11-15th, and I'll be demonstrating flintknapping on Saturday November 14th for two hours starting at 10AM.

The reason for the move to the Arts and Culture Centre is the Convention Centre downtown kept raising their prices on us. Every year we had to pay more and it was impossible for the Craft Council to break even on the event. There is no comparable sized venue in St. John's. We needed a place with room for 70-100 booths. We picked the Arts and Culture Centre, for a lot of reasons, but the smaller floor space meant that we needed to create two back to back fairs to fit in all the booth holders.

There are some really big benefits to the Arts and Culture Centre for everyone. One is the parking - there are hundreds of free parking spaces, which was a big issue for a lot of people at the downtown location. Since its a public space and so much cheaper for us to rent than the Convention Centre, the admission is free. You can come as often as you want and it won't cost you anything. Although, if you are in the Christmas Spirit, the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador has partnered with the CBC and the Community Food Sharing Association and there will be locations for donating non-perishable food items or cash at the door.

Photo Credits:
Top: Tim Rast
Middle: From the Arts and Culture Centre Website
Bottom: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Lost Stone Obsidian Necklace and Earrings ready for the show!
Middle: The Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's
Bottom: More Lost Stone Obsidian

Jewelry and Harpoon Head Ideas

2009-11-02T08:10:00.004-03:30

Its a jewelry week here. I'll be focusing on glass, chert, and fibre optic glass. I have bags of points that I keep on hand for emergencies. I don't have a lot of time before the craft fair, so I'll try to avoid starting pieces from scratch and focus on what I already have that is ready to be assembled.

On the other side of the coin, Elfshot is in great shape for artifact reproductions and original knives. I don't usually have this many artifact reproductions on hand so I'm looking forward to seeing how the craft fair display will go together. I have two harpoons ready to go, one is Dorset Palaeoeskimo and the other is a Maritime Archaic Indian style, just waiting for a red ochre application. I put a braided line on the Maritime Archaic harpoon because I liked John's idea so much. The 4 strand round braid takes the relatively thin harp seal leather and turns it into a pliable strong rope. I still wish I could find some good strong bearded seal skin, but the braided line does look nice.

I don't often have extra harpoons around the house either, so I feel like I'd like to do a little extra photography with them. Its especially interesting because they are so different, the Maritime Archaic Harpoon is a self-bladed barbed point while the Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon has a stone endblade fitted into a toggling harpoon head. This would be a good opportunity to illustrate the differences in how they work. Thanks to Mythbuster's the internet is full of recipes for homemade ballistics gel. I think I'll make some and stab it. If I have some successful experiments I'll post pictures.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Red glass points ready for jewelry.
Middle: Maritime Archaic indian harpoon head and braided line, around a Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon head and line
Bottom: Dorset Palaeoeskimo Harpoon Head (left) and Maritime Archaic Indian Harpoon Head (right)

Craft Fair Obsidian

2009-10-30T08:33:00.008-02:30

The 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's starts next week. The fair is 10 days long this year with a switch over in booths after five days. I'm participating in the second half of the fair so I have just under 2 weeks prep time left.

I've been working on larger one of a kind pieces, like harpoons, knives and Lost Stone necklaces this week. They aren't the sort of pieces that I like to be working on at the last minute and if something goes wrong I want as much time as possible to fix them. In the next couple of days I'll switch to smaller jewelry. If there are colours or materials that you'd like to see at the fair let me know ASAP and I'll be sure to have some on hand.

Here's a peak at the knives while the sinew is drying and the Lost Stone necklaces before they are strung. I've had these knife blades around since at least last spring, but I just got around to making handles for them this week. There are a couple maple handles in there from some left over hardwood flooring at Lori's parent's cabin, a couple pieces of yew from this summer's bows and a couple moose antler handles. I don't think I've used any of these materials in knife handles before so the fair will be a chance to see which materials and styles appeal to people. I like the moose antler tines more than I was expecting.

The Lost Stone necklaces are different every time. It looks like I'll only have 6 ready for the fair, so if they appeal to you come see me early between November 11-15th. Parking and Admission are free this year so you can come check out the show as many times as you'd like!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: An Obsidian Lost Stone Necklace waiting to be strung
Second: Detail of the most recent batch of Obsidian Knives
Third: Obsidian Knives for the 2009 Fine Craft and Design Fair
Fourth: Obsidian Lost Stone Necklaces ready to string

Ivvavik, Aulavik, and Tuktut Nogait Recap

2009-10-28T08:46:00.005-02:30

This is the final post on the Parks Canada project and then I'll stop talking about it. It went on a few weeks longer than I expected and I blame a lot of that on the weather slowing down some of the final drying stages. The photos show the original Inuvialuit artifacts alongside the reproductions. These aren't casts - they are 1:1 reproductions made in the original materials; wood for wood, antler for antler, tin for tin, etc. All of the artifacts have Parks Canada numbers attached to them somewhere. I marked or engraved a "TR" in the same location on all of the reproductions to help distinguish them from the originals. I have one last meeting in at The Rooms this morning. Elaine Anton has been a tremendous help arranging the shipping and storage of the artifacts while I've been working on them. Today she assesses the condition of the artifacts to ensure that there was no deterioration of their condition over the summer and we'll package everything up for FedEx to pick up. Later today the artifacts go back to the conservation lab in Winnipeg and the reproductions head to the Parks Canada Office in Inuvik.

Ivvavik National Park:

Artifacts in the middle, reproductions above and below

Artifacts in the middle, reproductions left and right

Aulavik National Park:

Artifacts (bottom) Reproductions (Top)

Tuktut Nogait National Park:

Artifacts (bottom) Reproductions (Top)

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:

First: The "TR" Signature. Well, technically I snuck in a Lazy L there for my middle initial, too.

Second-Seventh: Artifact Comparisons.

Scraper and Fish Hook - In the Bag!

2009-09-23T09:44:00.007-02:30

When I got back from the Rooms yesterday there were two tow trucks and a police car parked in front of our house. Traffic was crawling along and there was a car in the street scrunched diagonally into a parked car a few doors down from us. Before hitting that parked car they'd clipped the mirror off of our neighbors car who was parked right outside our house. We got pretty lucky. Parking at The Rooms has been terrible this summer, but if I hadn't been there for a couple hours yesterday afternoon, then our car could have been the one with the missing mirror or the crumpled fender.

Here are two more finished pieces.

Flake Scraper: This is an artifact from Aulavik. (original on the right) Its made from quartzite, that was probably collected near the site from glacial till. I have a tough time getting quartzite in Newfoundland, but I was lucky to have met Jack Cresson a couple years ago and he left me a couple pieces of meta-quartzite from his neck of the woods. I believe the piece I used on this reproduction is from New Jersey. Its an excellent texture match for the artifact, which is a simple scraper made on a bifacial thinning flake. It would have been struck from a larger tool and then modified on one face to create a steep scraping edge. In the photos the flake platform is at the top of the photo and the scraper edge is at the bottom.

When I look at these photos they are kind of like looking at that optical illusion of the cake with the missing slice - sometimes they look right and sometimes they look upside down to me.. The convention in archaeology is to photograph flakes with the platform at the top, but scrapers are usually photographed with the working edge at the top. I photographed this like a flake, instead of a tool, so for archaeologists looking at this picture the flake properties are probably accentuated. It looks like a flake made into a scraper. If I would have photographed it with the scraper edge at the top I would be emphasizing the 'toolness' of the artifact over the 'flakiness' of it. If I wanted to argue that this was a lightly retouched flake quickly modified into an expedient tool, then these are the photos that I'd use. If I wanted to argue that this is a carefully made scraper, perhaps a diagnostic form, then I'd use a photo with the scraper edge at top. I wasn't thinking about all this when I took the photo, it just looked right to me to photograph it with the platform at the top, but another archaeologist could look at the same object and instinctively orient it the opposite way. Sometimes that bias creeps in unintentionally, but sometimes its used intentionally to bolster one interpretation over another.

Fish Hook: The original fish hook (middle) was found at Ivvavik National Park. I mentioned this one in an earlier post and here's a look at the finished reproductions. The two holes at the thin end are for attaching the fishing line and a metal or bone spike would have been fastened in the large hole at the bulb end. In this photo, I'm holding the object in my hand - this is how archaeologist's say "This is a very cool object and if we don't find something better I'll put this picture on the report cover."

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Photo Caption:
Top: Ventral surface of the fish hooks - original in the middle
Second: Dorsal surface of the flake scraper - original on the right
Third: Ventral surface of the flake scraper - original on the right
Fourth: Dorsal surface of the fish hooks - original in the middle

Fort Garry Tobacco Tin and Quartzite, Again, Finally

2009-10-23T07:22:00.012-02:30

I ate about six pounds of jujubes, gummy worms, and gum balls yesterday so it must have been a good birthday. Lori also topped up my chocolate covered espresso beans to help me wake up in the mornings, which is good because six pounds of jellied sugar rolling around your guts sure doesn't make you want to pop out of bed the next day. I also got a bunch of new clothes including this shirt.

I had hoped that yesterday would be the last day working on the Parks contract, but after comparing the final reproductions to the artifacts and talking to a conservator friend who works at The Rooms, I realized that almost everything was missing an important brown colour. Its all done, but the last set of artifacts could really use some more Burnt Umber, so on the way home I stopped at MF Kelly and picked up some pastel and charcoal sticks to grind up and dust on. I have one more trip today to confirm that Burnt Umber made them good and then thats it. It'll just be packing and shipping after that.

Fort Garry Tobacco Tin: Aulavik National Park. The reproduction is above the original in both photos. This was a new sort of reproduction for me so it had a bit of a learning curve. I've talked a little about the history of the tin and my approach to reproducing it in previous posts. The words that you can't quite read say "FORT GARRY SMOKING TOBACCO". Aging the paint and adding the rust were the most challenging aspects of this project. I wound up using white washes over areas of the paint to create the sun bleached look of the paint. Without the white wash the paint colours and contrast were a little too sharp. The rust/paint boundaries were still a little sharp. In the artifact there is a kind of rusty halo that creaps out around the exposed rusted metal into the adjacent paint. On my reproduction the paint/metal boundaries were too sharp until I added a final red ochre wash around the rust patches to create the fuzzy boundaries and depth that I needed.

It was possible to have a lot more control over the rust than I'd imagined. The paint did its job and prevented the muriatic acid from rusting anywhere that it touched. To guide the shape fo the rust pattern all Ihad to do was scrape off the paint in the areas that I wanted to rust. Once the muriatic acid had rusted an area I could tweak the colour by adding water, sunlight and a quick drying environment to give me brighter reds and oranges. Dabbing a bit of tea on the rust would turn it black from the tannins. The piece was constantly evolving and responding to the temperature and air around it, on dry days it would be more orange and on damp days it would be more black. To try and stabilize it at the point I wanted it, I sprayed on a clear varnish. I needed that clear finish to match the gloss of the original tin and blocking out the air should prevent future changes in the rust colour.

Quartzite Scraper: Tuktut Nogait National Park. The artifact is on the left and the reproduction is on the right. This is the last piece of quartzite in this contract. I don't know how many versions of this piece I made over the summer, but I destroyed most of the quartzite that Jack Cresson gave me trying to get this piece out. Basically, its a very short hard hammer flake removed from the dish shaped flake scar of a previous hard hammer flake. Its part of a cone made on the negative space made by a cone. Its another one of those really simple and really difficult pieces to make. The original artifact would have taken less than 20 seconds to make by hitting one rock with another rock twice. But trying to match those exact conditions a few hundred years later is like trying to copy a snowflake. Like I said on Wednesday, the simpler something is the harder it is to reproduce.

Photo Credits:
Top: Lori White
Second-Fourth: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
Top: Comparing Fort Gary Smoking Tobacco Tins in my birthday shirt
Second: Fort Garry Tobacco Tin (bottom) and reproduction (top)
Third: Back of the Fort Garry Tobacco Tin (bottom) and reproduction (top)
Fourth: Quartzite flake scraper (left) and Reproduction (right)