Thankyou!
JEB, I punched these notches with a copper nail flattened on the end like a screw driver and a small piece of maple ,like 1" X 1" X about 7" long to hit the nail with. I used a leather hand pad on top of a leather leg pad on my leg to support the piece and would let the ears hand off the edge of the hand pad to reduce bending forces on the ears as the notches got deeper.
I used to pressure notch with a sharp steel nail flaker and I could control the notch better that way but it put a lot of stress on my arms and wrists due to weird angles needed to be able to see what I was doing and come from underneath to seat the flaker and apply enough force without letting the flaker rotate up into the notch.
Mullet It was real iffy of the for the first half of the notches until I finally got some good C-flakes to pop off and remove more mass ahead of me. From there it went pretty good up to where they are now and one side got steep angles and stalled.
It was really fun to do though and I enjoyed it so much, I can't wait to attempt another one.
I'll get a pic of the punch and hardwood wacker tonight. I never used a wacker this small before but it seemed to be the perfect size to swing fast and remove flakes without stressing the piece too much
