How to Thin a Piece of Stone

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm John Olsen for Expert Village. We have basically a bi-face here and we're going to go to a next step called thinning. I've got to dull this a little bit on the edges so I don't cut myself. This is a very sharp rock. I need to start planning where I want to take thinning flakes off. If you can see right along here I have a ridge and that's the fattest part of this stone right now. What I'm going to do, is right out here on this edge, I'm going to create a little nubbin right there and I'm going to dull it up. Then I'm going to turn it over and I'm going to put my fingers right on this edge. Then when I come down and strike, I'm going to strike right there and at the same time I'm going to be pulling with my fingers. So, I'm going to have this pressure pulling. I'm going to come in here. Pull on it. Then I'm going to strike it and I should have a long blade come off on the back side. Well, it kind of fell all apart, but it took off that ridge. And the process is going around and doing all these little fine tune hits that will thin this thing out for me. I've got another one there. Little flake will come off the back side. I'll just roll this thing all the way around and begin the process of thinning. That was a really nice hit. It had a really nice sound so it should be a fairly large flake. And that could be made into an arrow head. Got a wide spot over here, it's kind of thick. Same thing. This is where I usually get myself in trouble because I try to make it too thin but we're no where near that point right now."