A few years ago my brother gave me one of my Dad's arrow head "pictures". (Somehow he ended up with both of them.) Every head had been glued to a piece of plywood and framed behind glass. I didn't have room for the huge thing in my house so I decided to take it apart, remove the arrow heads, clean them and then use the wood and glass from the existing picture frame to make a hinged foam compression box. I just spent the last two hours cleaning the glue off of the back of the arrow heads. It looked like they were glued on with regular Elmers Glue, so a soak in water and it scraped off with my thumbnails. A few of them look like they had been glued on another board before and have some brown (? colorblind) glue residue that will flake off with scraping but I'm hesitant to go scraping on them. Anyway, I stumbled across a couple that were knapped with a twist. One of them was knapped with a hard right helical. I can't help wondering if that was done intentionally. Anyway, here's a pic of all of them on a towel drying, a couple pics of the helical head and a pic of the residue that's on a handful of them. Any suggestions on what might take that crap off of them without scraping them?
Stones are very fun to "hunt" for. My Dad and i have spent many, many days/years hunting for them. It's interesting to picture the person that did the flaking to make them. I have several that as you put them in your hand, you can definitely tell that the person doing the knapping was definitely left-handed. As to cleaning the residue, they are stones so unless you grab a grinder, you are very unlikely to damage them by scraping them. You might change the patina by scraping too hard but that would likely be it. Nice collection. Be careful not to start looking for stones..... it is very addicting!!!!
I grew up walking freshly plowed crop fields looking for them after it rained, and I spent a lot of hours looking for them with my Dad. I actually found quite a few of the ones pictured.
Finger nail polish remover might work. Just try a litte spot first to make sure it doesn't remove the patina but takes the glue off. I have a small collection that Is made into a butterfly pattern and is framed with a red background. Special memories in finding those flint and chert pieces.
That looks great! I found an artifact forum and lots of folks recommend acetone. I’ll have to give it a try.
Great collection! I have found quite a few of them as a kid. Spent alot of time walking river banks looking for them. Found one in my yard a couple years ago. Dug out a stump in the yard, then rained that night. Next day walking across the yard, there it layed right on top of the dirt. Never have found it if it didn't rain. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
That is very cool, I could see myself becoming very addicted to searching for them if I got the chance. I've never found an arrow head of any kind here in Idaho though.
I grew up on a crop farm in the black river floodplain in southeast Missouri. Way back before farmers began leveling fields we could find arrow heads on just about any small ridge in a tilled field after a rain. I always assumed they were there because Native Americans hunted the game that took refuge on the ridges during a river flood. Since I took up bowhunting I’ve often thought about how ticked off one of them must have been to lose an arrow after all the work that went into one.
Many times I took hand crews out west and all we did was mop up, never saw a flame. I used to keep a fake indian spearhead in my pack to "find" about day 8 or 9, kept the kids motivated..
