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Our relationship with rocks and minerals is quite fascinating. We can
depend upon granite and limestone for housing, talc and pumice for beauty
aids, clay and chalk for digestive aids, flint and chert for the procurement
of fire and meat, and a wide variety of geologic products for entertainment
and adornment. Archaeological finds suggest that we have been augmenting
ourselves with jewelry for at least 100,000 years, with the advent of
material symbolism in the form of Nassarius shell beads that have been found
in Israel. One of the oldest stone pendants found to date was ground and
incised about 26,000 years ago, using paleolithic technology during the
Gravettian culture in what is now Romania.
One of the most satisfying pursuits I’ve ever engaged in consists of
identifying potentially useful natural materials and transforming them into
functional tools and attractive works of art. As I walk a beach or hike
through the forest, my eyes scour the landscape in search of workable wood,
bones and stones. Here in the northeastern corner of the San Gabriel
Mountains of southern California, I am fortunate to encounter an extensive
assemblage of attractive crystals (tourmaline, corundum, actinolite, biotite/muscovite/fuschite
micas, epidote/zoisite, pyrite, rutile) and malleable rocks such as talc
schist, chlorite schist, serpentinite and nephrite jade (living within 500
feet of the San Andreas Fault has its advantages...).
Upon locating a sizeable boulder of soft rock, such as talc-magnesite
schist, I proceed to reduce the material to a manageable size by smashing it
with another rock. But I prefer to let nature do as much of the work as
possible, so I enjoy finding small cobbles that are ready to be carved and
ground into pendants and containers using stone age tools. The incising
tools that I use include shards of bone (the needle bones located in the
ankles of deer work quite well), beaver and javelina teeth, bird beaks,
stone flakes, hafted elk antler saws and stone knives. Cutting through talc
schist, gypsum alabaster, and chlorite is quite easy using these tools,
especially if the cutting edges are rough or toothed. Bone needs to be
sharpened often, while flint, chert and basalt can score harder rocks
without losing their edges.
When I’m crafting a larger item out of soft rock, such as a bowl, I find
it faster to hollow out the interior if I use a bone or antler chisel. After
scoring parallel grooves one-half inch apart across the surface of the area
to be removed, I insert my chisel at a roughly 30-degree angle into the
groove and tap the top of the bone with a stone (apply a layer of buckskin
to the top of the chisel to avoid chipping it) or wooden hammer. This
removes chunks of rock at a much more efficient rate than grinding alone
accomplishes. Careful control of the chisel tip’s impact on the margin of
the future container must be maintained, or the lip of the bowl might be
damaged beyond repair.
Incising isn’t always necessary or more expedient: if the cobble is small
enough, then grinding may be all that’s required in order to shape the rock
into your desired object. I use flat slabs of sandstone (quartzite works as
well) to grind material that contains minerals softer than quartz. I’ve
ground rocks using both a circular motion and a back-and-forth motion upon
the grindstone, and have found that both methods work equally well in
maintaining control over the shape of the final product. Please take
adequate safety precautions when creating rock dust, which could enter your
lungs and cause health problems: Most people keep their grindstone wet. I
always do my grinding outside to further minimize this concern.
After grinding a rock down to a suitable thickness for a pendant, I
usually employ a quartz crystal-tipped hand drill to bore a hole for the
necklace. This simple tool consists of a center-pointed quartz crystal that
has been sunk and glued into the tip of a straight twig. Usually, the quartz
crystals that I’ve found and used aren’t long enough to fully penetrate the
pendant. In order to complete this task, a thin, pointed sliver of bone or
stone can be used to bore, by hand, through the rest of the pendant. I like
to round off any sharp edges around the hole that the quartz drill leaves to
lessen the chance of accidental chipping or breakage.
Decomposition of the local basement rock (muscovite schist) provides me
with adequate polishing grit in the form of fine silt. I hand-polish stone
pendants with this silt using a piece of soft buckskin, which can make quite
a difference in the finished piece. The best natural grit I’ve used thus far
is very fine black and white sand that I found in a wash near Barstow, CA.
Whether I’m making pendants, containers or fly-wheels for drilling and
fire-making devices, I like to coat the finished articles with animal fat
(mineral oil and beeswax works as well). Not only does this bring out the
stunning colorations and patterns found in rocks, but it might preserve the
structural integrity of the product and reduce the visual marring of
incidental scratches.
Soft rocks such as Chlorite
Schist can easily be split using a bone chisel
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