My first Stone Age tools

My first hammer stone with its granular texture and dark colour is flatter on the bottom than it used to be. This is better for some tasks and not so good for others. I have been using this hammer stone since I first experimented at college in 1999.

If I had know how important this stone would become I would have collected several of its type. Luckily I collected one other, however it has a nodule on the main striking surface and so I can’t relax into the hammering process which, despite the noise and physical reverberations, can be quite meditative on a good day, particularly when working with sheet metal.

A couple of years ago, my back-up hammer fractured. It was such a shock on many levels and made me hesitant for a while about using my beloved stone pictured above, in case it too suffered such a fate. It forced me to take my fractured stone to the Mineralogy and Petrology Department at the Oxford University of Natural History to have it identified and to find out where I might collect similar material. Luckily, the likely source is nearer than the far North Western coast of Scotland, or Pembrokeshire which I had thought were the most likely possibilities.

The stone on the left is my first anvil, still used occasionally when I want a smoother surface on the underside of a piece.