Ivory Projectile Point

ToddsPoint

Gold Member
Mar 2, 2018
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Todds Point, IL
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I heard that a rib bone from an ancient animal (mastodon?) was found with a bone or ivory point embedded in it. I haven’t read the article but I thought about it and decided to make an ivory point. I used a piece of mammoth ivory I had and ground out a point using modern tools then polished it. Point is about 2” long. I got the edges thin and sort of sharp but I was able to get a needle point on the tip. You could no doubt stick something pretty good with it. I ended up drilling it and turned it into a pendant. I dulled the edges and tip so whoever wears it won’t get stuck. Chipping a point from flint would be far easier than making an ivory point with primitive tools. If you had no flint, it would work okay.
 

Nic
View attachment 2071202I heard that a rib bone from an ancient animal (mastodon?) was found with a bone or ivory point embedded in it. I haven’t read the article but I thought about it and decided to make an ivory point. I used a piece of mammoth ivory I had and ground out a point using modern tools then polished it. Point is about 2” long. I got the edges thin and sort of sharp but I was able to get a needle point on the tip. You could no doubt stick something pretty good with it. I ended up drilling it and turned it into a pendant. I dulled the edges and tip so whoever wears it won’t get stuck. Chipping a point from flint would be far easier than making an ivory point with primitive tools. If you had no flint, it would work okay.
e job! Looks good.
 

Sweet, curious how expensive would it be to get enough mammoth ivory to do something like that? Last I saw they were up in Siberia blasting the permafrost with hoses to get to the ivory and making big bucks off of a single tusk. But I love the idea of making something out of mammoth ivory.
 

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A guy that made ivory pistol grips gave me a big box of his scraps. I made jewelry out of them until IL banned the buying, selling, or trading ivory. They banned all ivory including ivory from extinct animals. You can still own it and give it away. Here are a few pendants I carved.
 

The spear point you made is super-cool. You should enter it in a jewelry art show somewhere. It is very impressive! Thanks for sharing it with us.
 

Imagine being born into a world without stores and modern technology. You're a child growing up in the stone age.

Your father is a hunter clad in clothes made from the hides of his kills. He tells you to collect stones and bones. You watch as he shows you how to work these objects into tools so you may one day be able to do so too.

Then when you're older and more confident you make some tools of your own. Without telling anyone you go out and try to hunt. It doesn't go well, because you are just a child and your weapons are still poorly made.

But while you're out you see fantastical beasts - huge hulking woolly mammoths, ferocious saber-toothed tigers, you even catch a glimpse of the 'other people' the different species of human - the hulking Neanderthals.

You take a piece of charcoal and draw what you saw on the walls of your cave. Your father sees what you have drawn. He is proud of you. It is the year 30,000 B.C. and you have no idea that one day in the future people from all across the globe would travel in flying machines to see your drawings and the tools you and your father had made, and they would wonder who you were.
 

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