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Hafting a stone point question

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JackCrafty:
I've been adding pure talc powder to the pitch and it works very well to make the mix stiffer. It's cheap too.

I also always add some powdered asphaltum (bitumen) as well, instead of charcoal. The asphaltum makes it very dark, like charcoal, but also makes the glue more workable by increasing the melting point a little. It's less sticky at lower temps.

I've never used animal dropping in the glue and there is only one place (that I know of) that mentions droppings as a "possible ingredient" in the ancient glue mix. Most glue used on the real artifacts is straight pine or other evergreen pitch (waterproof) or sap (not waterproof) with maybe a little powdered clay for color and stiffness.

Beeswax was never used in the New World until after European contact. It was used in Europe after the domestication of the honey bee. The proportion is about 10% of the mix.

JackCrafty:
In case anyone is wondering how Ishi hafted his points, here is a quote from, "Hunting with the Bow and Arrow", By Saxton Pope, 1923.

When ready for use, these heads were set on the end of the shaft with heated resin and bound in place with sinew which encircled the end of the arrow and crossed diagonally through the barb notches with many recurrences.

Mesophilic:
Jack,

So what would be a good recipe for an authentic Native American pine pitch glue?  The additives you mentioned...would one be able to gather them naturally?

On my bucket list is taking a large game animal with an arrow I made completely from scratch with nothing modern.  I don't necessarily need to gather everything myself as trading is well established in prehistoric times.   But I do want to do it as naturally as possible.

Marc St Louis:
I don't add any vegetable matter to my mix, tried it without one time and found it didn't make any difference.  I just use resin and beeswax.  I have used resin and tallow, which would be what was used traditionally here, but find beeswax to work better

JackCrafty:
A good authentic recipe would depend on where you live. If you live near the gulf coast or the west coast, asphaltum was the main ingredient and sometimes used by itself. If you live in the far north, or at high elevations, the primary ingredient was evergreen pitch with spruce being the best.  Everywhere else usually has some sort of pine tree growing there, so that was used primarily, although I've seen some examples of other tree sap used after it has been boiled down a bit (I assume) to make it thicker.

If you're reproducing arrows from Central America or areas that traded with Indians from there, you can add some gum base, or natural latex or chicle, to the mix.

There were various things added to the resin or asphaltum to increase stiffness but the most common was powdered clay, fine sand, or ground up pigment of some sort. Sometimes different resins from different trees were combined and sometimes small amounts of asphaltum was thrown in as well, even in areas that were not close to the ocean. It seems like various ingredients were added to the "glue pot" on a continual basis in order to keep a good supply on hand.

The mix I use on most points is either hard pine rosin mixed with a little liquid pine tar or asphaltum powder mixed with gum base (basically roofing tar mixed with chewing gum). I've been adding pure talc powder (basically baby powder) to increase the volume and stiffness. If you dont want to buy talc powder, you can make a bunch of rock dust by rubbing two flat stones together.  You can add quite a bit of powder to the mix and double the amount of glue that way.

Some tribes would mix fat with spruce resin, for example, but the fat has to be suet (the fat next to the kidneys) or some other very hard fat or the mix will be too brittle. It works the opposite of how you might think. Soft, runny fat actually makes the mix break up and shatter more easily when cool.

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