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cushing technique- it works!

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aaron:
HA HA, made you click. The technique I am using here is the one cushing describes on page 317 of his book. Where he describes the Hopi resting a biface on top of the leg and hitting it directly with a hammer-like tool of antler. (like 90% of modern knappers do). I'll be working on a type 2B Danish dagger.
Let's start by selecting a blank from the cache:

aaron:
The piece I chose is a biface about 10 inches long and one inch thick. The thickest part is the pointyer end, so I will use that for the handle (bottom in photo). On a finished dagger, the handle will be about 1 inch thick and one inch wide, so I'll have to be careful not to reduce the thickness there. The blade, should finish out about 2 inches wide and about 1/2 inch thick. This is the main challenge of these pieces- one end is thick and narrow, the other is thin and wider. The thickest point should be near one end, not in the middle like most other things. shown also is a small and rough old type 2B- I like 'em with a slightly wider blade.

aaron:
Here are my tools. The hammer-shaped elk billet is the one I used most on this. The punch might be used in the later stages. Other boppers are moose. In my tool box, you can see some laminated paper cutouts I keep on hand to help me get the profiles right.

aaron:
The blade area needs some major thinning, and has some challenges leftover from earlier work, I think I'll take care of these with one massive (almost) coast-to-coast flake. BAM

aaron:
After some more thinning with direct percussion, the blade is definitely thinner than the handle. Now, I will need to narrow it considerably without altering the width-to-thickness ratios much. This is always a challenge. I may be thinning it to early- maybe I should have narrowed it more first.

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