Still got it

I apparently still have my flintknapping skills.  I made a 1.5” arrowhead from scratch (i.e. a raw chip) this afternoon for the first time in almost four years.  My grandfather had a stash of them I made for him and my grandmother when I was in high school but apparently he has been giving them away or selling them to gullible tourists.  He asked if I had any more last time we talked on the phone.  I finally got around to digging out my toolbox where I keep my collection of authentic stone age style tools and the points I have in various stages of completion.  I mailed him the finished and near finished points I had at the start of the week.

Looking through my tools got me thinking about why I had stopped flintknapping.  I traced it back to my sister’s death.  The last point I made was in Canehill in the weeks before her suicide.  It was a pink glass point as well.  I made it and left it on the kitchen table and I had thought I had lost it for a while.  I found it on my sister’s knickknack shelf in her bedroom after.  I just haven’t been able to talk myself in to picking up my hammer stone and my antler tines since.  I convinced myself it was because I had warn out my leather hand protector used to keep from driving shards into my palm while pressure flaking the edge of a point.  In reality it was just an excuse. 

After I mailed my grandfather the points from my tool box I went online and found a Tandy’s Leather Goods and ordered a bag of leather scraps.  They arrived this afternoon and I spent an hour on the back deck flaking away at a piece of glass.  It was real satisfying to see that familiar shape taking over that piece of glass.  It brought back a lot of memories.