How to Make Arrowheads: 2 Different Materials

To learn how to make arrowheads, follow these simple and easy steps. Learn 2 ways of making arrowheads; using glass and wood.

How to Make Glass Arrowheads

To learn how to make glass arrowheads, firstly; take a glass bottle. Could be a wine/juice bottle, or any other bottle that is readily available.
Next, take a nail with a wide head and drop it into the bottle from the opening.

Cover the opening of the bottle and shake it continuously until the bottom comes apart. Remember to shake it vertically, instead of horizontal movements, since you want the nail to continue hitting the bottom panel of the bottle to break it free.
After this, take a leather cloth/pad and keep it in your palms. Hold the bottom glass panel you have just extracted. This shall be the main component to make glass arrowheads.
When you have the bottom in your hands, be careful since the edges may be rugged. To fix the glass edges, take a billet and smoothen them. This would reveal a perfect circular glass panel.
Next, to convert this into glass arrowheads, it is important to trim down the sides. Place the glass piece on the leather with smooth side upwards.
Take a chalk, marker, or anything that would be legible on the glass. Draw lines on the glass to display a rectangle.
To begin to make the glass arrowhead, firmly grip your flaker. Start hitting at the sides of the glass until your reach the rectangular outlines you have drawn. For this, begin with a 90° angle between your flaker and the glass and hit sharply. This will take off major chunks.

Next, Reduce the angle size and hit at the ends of the glass to reach the outline.
By now, you shall have almost neared the outline. To make the rectangle neat and clean, place the glass bottom completely flat on the leather. For final touches, hit the flaker gently to remove any excess glass from outline.
Repeat these steps for all 4 lines until you have a reached a rectangular-shaped glass piece.
Being a bottle’s end, the glass shall be thick. To thin it down, gently hit the flaker on the hump to take off small flakes from the glass. This will make the rectangle thinner.
Since arrowheads are triangular, the next step to make a glass arrowhead involves conversion into a triangle. Get your chalk and draw a triangle (or ‘V’) in the glass.
Switch to a flaker with a pointed head, or a more pointed flaker. Trim down the sides of the glass in the same way as earlier to reach the outlines of the triangle.
After these steps, you should be left with a thin, pointed, triangular glass piece. Next, move to a table to continue with the notching technique.

Place the arrowhead gently on the table. Take your pointed flaker and create a notch slightly above the base of the triangle. Do not make it very near to the base, nor make it too narrow. If such is done, a piece from the base can break off and ruin your arrowhead making.
Make the notch on both sides of the triangle – symmetrical to one another.
Lastly, flip the glass and make the same indentation with the flaker at the same location.
Voila! Your desire to make a glass arrowhead is now complete.

How to Make Arrowheads with Wood

To learn how to make arrowheads with wood, the first step entails getting the right While basswood is preferred by many, a hard and firmer arrowhead instead could be made using pinewood.
Next, take the piece of wood and make an outline of a box-shape upon it using chalk. This could be as large as you want, or a good size can be a 5-inch square.
Take a band saw and begin sawing the edges – down to the chalk outline. Remember to wear goggles to protect your eyes from the wooden specks.
Since we want to make an arrowhead with wood, it has to look like an arrow. This means it requires a triangular shape. Take your chalk again and make an inverted ‘V’ shape.
After this, pick your band saw again and begin to whittle down the sides of the wooden square.
Continue to saw the edges until your wood has attained the shape of a pointed triangle.
If you want to make arrowheads for a hunting purpose, your spike should be extra pointy. Whittle down the triangle’s side to give the tip extra pointiness.
Place the arrowhead on a table, and make notches on both sides, distanced from the base of the triangle.
Next, make 2 straight lines beginning from the base and going up to 25% of the triangle (1.5-2 inches).
Saw in line with the chalk markings and you shall be left with a rugged arrow shape.
Grab sandpaper and rub the sides to make them smooth.
Your endeavor to learn how to make arrowheads with wood is now complete.

What type of rock is used to make arrowheads?

Those that have survived are usually made of stone, primarily consisting of flint, obsidian, or chert. In many excavations, bone, wooden, and metal arrowheads have also been found.

How do you make an arrowhead by hand?

How long does it take to make an arrowhead?

Obsidian can be made in to a functional arrowhead by an experienced craftsman in around 10-15 minutes. Spearheads around an hour, depending on size. There is a difference though in making a functional tool and making something that looks pretty. Getting uniform and fine flake patterns does take longer.

How do you make a flint arrowhead?

What type of rock is Flint?

Flint is a microcrystalline rock made of silica and is considered to have begun forming soon after the deposition of Chalk. The silica replaces the original Chalk carbonate grain by grain.

How do you shape a flint rock?

What is the best rock for knapping?

The best rocks for flint-knapping are chert, flint, chalcedony, quartzite, jasper, and obsidian. Chert and flint are silica-rich rocks found throughout the Midwest in limestone and dolomite deposits.

How do you break chert?

One or two sturdy, fast hits with a hammer stone can dislodge good sized flakes for me. If I am wanting something larger then you can take another stone on the ground and hold the chert in both hands and swing down hard. It creates a cortzian cone and snaps off a large section of stone.

What does chert look like?

Chert has four diagnostic features: the waxy luster, a conchoidal (shell-shaped) fracture of the silica mineral chalcedony that composes it, a hardness of seven on the Mohs scale, and a smooth (non-clastic) sedimentary texture.

Can chert scratch glass?

Some limestone contains chert, which is very, very hard silica (like flint).

Non-Clastic Sedimentary Rocks.

Mineral	Microscopic quartz chalcedony
Chemical Form	SiO₂
Characteristics	Crypotocrystalline, dense, conchoidal fracture, dull, very hard (scratches glass)
Rock Name	Chert

Is Obsidian a real thing?

obsidian, igneous rock occurring as a natural glass formed by the rapid cooling of viscous lava from volcanoes. Obsidian is extremely rich in silica (about 65 to 80 percent), is low in water, and has a chemical composition similar to rhyolite.

Where is chert commonly found?

Occurrence of Chert

if where it occurs in chalk or marl, it is called flint. It also occurs in thin beds, when it is a primary deposit (such as with many jaspers and radiolarites). Thick beds of chert occur in deep marine deposits.

What rock is chert found in?

Chert occurs in carbonate rocks as oval to irregular nodules in greensand, limestone, chalk, and dolomite formations as a replacement mineral, where it is formed as a result of some type of diagenesis. Where it occurs in chalk or marl, it is usually called flint.

Is Flint the same as chert?

Chert and flint are microcrystalline varieties of quartz. The only difference between chert and flint is color: flint is black or nearly black and chert tends to be white, gray, or pink and can be either plain, banded, or preserve fossil traces.

How old is chert rock?

The Rhynie Cherts in Scotland contain remains of the oldest land ecosystem from nearly 400 million years ago early in the Devonian Period. And the Gunflint Chert, a unit of banded iron formation in western Ontario is famous for its fossil microbes, dating from the Early Proterozoic time some two billion years ago.

Can chert be dated?

The age of the Rhynie chert and it’s associated sediments has been calculated by combining two analytical methods: absolute dating and biostratigraphy.

How old is the siltstone rock?

The Triceratops dinosaur fossils are approximately 70 million years old, because they are found in shale and siltstone that contain volcanic ash radiometrically dated at 70 million years.

What kind of rock is diatomite?

Diatomite is a chalk-like, soft, friable, earthy, very fine-grained, siliceous sedimentary rock, usually light in color (white if pure, commonly buff to gray in situ, and rarely black).