I decided not to be lazy this weekend and worked on an explanation of how to reduce using ridges that you create purposefully. The idea here is to reduce area that does not have a ridge so you just create one. The drawing is the best way to describe what is happening. This is a process that is a combination of fluting techniques from Jim Winn, Marty's hammer stone work, and my idea of their combination to create ridges for isolated flake removal rather than a continuous platform for blending flakes onto the stone.
This process is for removing flakes with your antler bopper from the biface stage to the reduced preform stage. The biggest problem for antler is to reduce thickness without losing width. We (antler knappers lose lots of width trying to set up platforms stout enough to handle the impact and drive flake in and over the median ridge without a hinge in the process. One of the reasons I had a hard time moving from copper to ABO seemed to be related to platform structure and and the flake removal process. What seems to happen for me with copper was I just powered through a problems where as antler requires a more careful approach because the risks are greater. These risks are platform colapse , hinges, steps and short flake terminations. I am going to try and address each issuse and a technique that works to reduce each while driving your flake across the stone.
