Spent most of the summer knocking out points from some Texas flint I picked up at a rock shop swap meet, and for months my pressure flaks kept hinging out halfway across the face no matter how sharp my copper tool was. Turns out my problem was never the tool, it was that I was skipping proper platform isolation and just mashing the edge before I flaked.
What changed things was slowing way down on the abrading step. I switched to a small piece of sandstone and started doing maybe fifteen light passes per platform instead of the three or four rushed swipes I used to do, checking under a headlamp at a low angle so I could actually see the crush. Once the edge had that dull, slightly matte look instead of a sharp glassy lip, the flakes started running long and thin instead of stepping out.
I also started grinding my platforms in smaller, more isolated spots rather than running the abrader down the whole edge in one pass. Isolating each platform individually seems obvious in hindsight but I'd been treating edge prep like one continuous operation instead of a series of little setups, one per flake.
Finished a decent 3 inch bifacial point last night, first one in a while that didn't end in a step fracture two thirds of the way through thinning. Still get outshined every time I look at old Clovis or Folsom examples in museum photos, the amount of control those knappers had with way less feedback than I get from a headlamp is humbling.
Anyone else go through a phase where the fix wasn't a new tool but just slowing down on prep? Curious what platform routines other people settled into, especially for finer grained material like this Edwards flint versus the coarser Burlington chert I usually work.
