Main Discussion Area > HowTo's and Build-a-longs
Bone Arrowheads Anyone Can Make
Andrea S:
Okay, so...bones being the generally non-flat items they are, your blanks are bound to end up with some googly shapes. So, throw on the handy-dandy sanding drum bit and start shaping it out until it looks like a normal and perfect arrowhead blank.
Now, your bone piece is going to have a natural curve to it, as you can see from the end.
Don't fight it - work with it. If you mimic that curve on the convex side, you've begun to flute your arrowhead!
Make sure you've got everything all nice and symmetrical...sometimes a large part of that involves simply adjusting the angle of the bottom.
Then, draw out where you want the edge taper to begin.
Andrea S:
Just start ripping away with that dremel, making your angle tapers meet in a nice straight edge. When you've got that much roughed out, decide where you want your fluting to be. Then, draw a line across the arrowhead a little bit more towards the tip from where your fluting ends. From this line to the tip is where your taper will be (in terms of the thickness of the arrowhead).
Then, be sure to shiver a whole bunch because you're doing this outside in the cold.
Here's a profile of the taper.
It's tough to see the fluting in these pictures, but I've used the drum sanding bit and basically laid it down between my marks to make a channel, then moved it about to add some taper. I've also drawn on where I need to cut the corners so that the arrowhead is easier to pull out of a target, and the notches where sinew will be wrapped to secure the head to the shaft.
Back to the cutoff wheel, and a bit more of the sanding drum to smooth the bottom out, and voila!!
Minus some final sharpening, you've got yourself an arrowhead!
Pretty neat, compared to that ugly chunk of bone we started with.
Andrea S:
Please, feel free to ask any questions, or better yet, before I complete any more of these arrowheads, point out anything I might've screwed up!
Justin Snyder:
--- Quote from: Andrea S on April 06, 2008, 01:02:40 am ---
--- End quote ---
For a second I thought this was going to be safer than knapping. Now I can see that my leg is in just as much danger and probably my fingers too.
Thanks for sharing this Andrea. Justin
Andrea S:
Yeah, I dremelled (just invented that word) my fingers once or twice with the sanding drum...hurt like heck for a few good seconds. Luckily haven't gotten myself with a cutoff wheel, and I don't even want to think about it!! Yowch!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version