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Replicating the Sweetwater blade.
By Dwayne Earnhardt. August 2009
He had seen a few knappers using lever devices over the years at various knapins. He had also read about Reinhardt who supposedly used some type of lever device. So dad had considered this as a possible option to how the Sweetwater was made. Then while at the N. Georgia Knapin in April 2009, he visited Dan Spiers booth. Dan had bought our pressure flaking video "Adjust" in the previous year and dad wanted to see what Dan thought of it. Dan replied that the video showed the importance of lateral flexibility in the blade holding hand. Dan was also demonstrating the use of a lever device and suggested to dad that he should make one as well.
The problem with the lever as he had discussed with Dan, was you didn't have the lateral flexibility as you did in your hands and it took a lot of time to adjust for proper flaking angles. Dad knew being able to get the proper platforms and angles while applying the large amount of pressure needed would be the key to success, but also the hardest to accomplish.
Although, he still wasn't certain it was pressured flaked, it was his theory. Then one day he calls me and says he has noticed something in the flaking pattern. The best way I can describe it is an uniform "rippling" pattern left on the blade where the the flake itself was removed. We compared this to other pressure and percussion blades, and it became apparent that only the pressure blades had this uniform pattern.(see pictures). We believe this rippling is caused by the speed the flake is removed at, with a slower removal such as in pressure, causing the more uniform pattern. You can see the rippling effect in percussion work as well, but it isn't as uniform and normally seen at the end of the flake run, when the speed of the flake removal is slowing down.
An article was published in the Journal of Archeological Science in the mid 1990's that actually studied the removal speed of percussion flakes versus pressure. The study concluded that percussion flakes are removed at a much faster speed than pressure flakes.