Black Hand- thanks for all the great photos. On #3 down from top- if you look at the tacks where the shaft is bent over versus those cut off- to me- it looks like the diameter of the cut off tack shank is larger than the diameter of the bent over- maybe there was a small amount of peen hammering. It is pretty hard to tell one way or the other.
As I said- I have tried to peen hammer such shanks and with poor results- I just bent the shank unless I was using rawhide as stiff as a board- the rawhide supported the shank and let me hammer on the cut off end.
On the crimped over, it seems like an apparent solution but I got my information from Hansen's Fur Trade Cutlery Sketch book- in which he says such was done- hope he was correct on that- you never know.
The other issue is whether what the native people did was the same thing a mountain man or frontiersman would use. Miller, and others, painted mountain men and there is always (or almost always) just a single row of tacks. On the NDN work, there is quite a bit from the 1870's and later and often there are a lot of missing tacks.
I've sort of done it all, first I had brass tacks that I broke off the steel shanks and soldered on square brass shanks- I filled the entire void with solder- I think epoxy glue would probably work okay. I did the "double crimp" method. Later I bought square shanks from the Trunk Shoppe. Then I did the lead rivets. These lead rivets are heavy enough to be noticeable. Finally I did the harness rivets. It is a pretty difficult area as the art work is indistinct and few originals (pre-1840) remain. To be honest- I'm pretty much guessing on what was or wasn't pre-1840 pc.
