Interesting lance point

[tg]

About fifteen years ago a friend of mine traded me a lance point shown below for some custom BT/beadwork on a sheath, this point was cast in bronze then painted to look like Mahogany obsidian, the man who made it first knapped a point out of obsidian to make a mold to cast the point, I was told it took him three attempts before he made one that did not break, it is 10" by 2 1/4" by about 1/4"-5/16" I was going to make a Buffaloe lance out of it but didn't get to it and the point just kind of got lost in the shuffle untill I ran across it yesterday,The guy who gave it to me got it from the maker and he was told that only three were cast and the mould was broken, maybe a tall tale there but I have no way of knowing if there are only three or three thousand of them,I was curious if any one had seen such a point at Vous or other events in the last decade or so,i think the maker was from the South West, just making the point out of obsidian is quite a feat as it was done the original way as I was told, not useing rock saws and press machines to knapp with, I think a lot of the larger blades and points are now made by the "cheating" method with modern tools,anyway I thought I would share a pic of this piece with anyone who is interested

 

[LRB]

A very unique, and nice piece TG. You still gunna make a lance?

 

[BrownBear]

Back in the 60's there was a local on the Trinity River in California (owned the Big Bar store, as I recall) who was a world class flint knapper. He turned out some 18" ceremonial blades for the local Indians to use in their knife ceremony since the originals were pretty well broken up and none in the tribe could make their own. His were obsidian too, though they differed in the base. As I recall his edge flaking extended a lot further back toward the middle of the blades. The three blades I handled were on the order of 2.5" to 3.5" wide and wafer thin. You could see light right through them. He said the two biggest jobs were finding the right big pieces for popping off the blanks, then getting perfect blanks. Once you had done that, he said the material was so uniform flaking was easy compared to smaller pieces done with marginal material.

The closest I've seen "in the wild" is a very slender willowleaf shaped blade (pointed at both ends with no basal notching) I picked out of an ditch we dug on our place in Colorado. It's "only" a little over five inches long and tan-gray material rather than obsidian. But it's perfect in every way in spite of the work of a large excavator. The flaking is more reminiscent of the Trinity River blades than I see in your photo, but there was a whole lot of regional styling and technique in flake patterns.

 

[tg]

I doubt I will make a lance I have been out of the craft of replica NA stuff for quite a few years, I would have like the base a bit different for hafting than what this one is anyway, and finding the blank for starting is 99% of the game with knapping as far as I have found in my experience, with the right flake knocked off you just have to flake it to the middle both sides around and clean it up and you are there, I usually broke 3 to every one 3-4 inch point I made, I never tried or had the material for anything larger, it was fun learning the craft but would have been easier had I taken the time to get some good stock to start with, I got a kick out of showing some local NA's how to knap points at a pow wow one year, I tried selling some of my stuff thru a friend one season who was a member of the rez' but did not endear myself to the locals who were trying to sell stuff with plastic beads and dyed chicken feathers, they invited me not to come back again

 

[54]

looks cool. :thumbsup: