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I bought my father the Sweetwater cast for Christmas in 2008. I will never forget the look on his face when he laid eyes on it for the first time. He sat in total amazement of the blade. I could read his mind, how was this made he was wondering.
After the initial shock of it, his quest to figure out just how it was made began. Dad has always "thought out of the box" in his flintknapping work and coming up with new ideas or new ways to do things has never been a problem for him. For many years, this was out of necessity because he had very little contact with other knappers, just because they weren't many around. So i believe this helped to keep his mind open on his flintknapping projects. So i had faith, that if anyone could figure it out, he could.
Replicating the Sweetwater blade.
By Dwayne Earnhardt. August 2009
We spent many a hour studying the platforms and flaking patterns and discussing possible options to how it was made. He spent countless more on his own, on a nightly basis, studying the cast.
Since the Sweetwater appeared to be made by percussion with the big wide flakes and that was the prevailing theory, he started concentrating more more percussion work. But he had his doubts from the start if the blade was actually percussion flaked due to the precise nature it would require to make it. You are talking about being able to a hit 1/8 inch platform prefect every time and be able to follow through with your swing without causing breakage. The hand eye coordination needed to do this for approximately 50 large flakes found on the Sweetwater blade would be an incredible feat, seemingly impossible.
He started to believe more and more, the Sweetwater was actually pressured flaked. But he had no real way to prove it and no idea how it was actually accomplished. He could get the thinness, he had actually made some that were thinner. But the width was the problem, it was too wide to hold in your hand and pressure flake. Also, the pressure required to remove such enormous sized flakes would require more force than you could generate with an Ishi stick over an extended number of flakes needed to complete the blade. But he did know, that he had produced such flakes on occasion while pressure flaking in the past, so he knew it was possible.
