✅ SOLVED patina on K.R.F.

[GatorBoy]

It was brought to my attention earlier today that my understanding of how this type flint acquires patina overtime may not be correct.
Someone with what I believed to be a lot of experience with this material actually explained it exactly opposite from what I... up to this point believe.
I have several pieces here as examples as to why I believe the first layer of patina to show up is white followed by a blue hue as it thickens.
The piece I have here with the heaviest amount of patina is the only one that has started to show any blue color.
I was hoping maybe some more examples could be shown.















Judging by these examples it looks like white comes first to me.
Are these not good representatives?

 

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[old digger]

Gator, my personal opinion on KRF patination depends on exposure to sun light and the minerals in the ground. Exposure to the sun doesn't necessary explain the age of the patina on a point. Here are some photos of three different points that range from 2500 bp to 8000-9500 bp. They have the same white patina but are vastly different in age.


Here is a heavy patinaed Pelican Lake that was made from KRF.

Here is the middle section of an Eden point that was made from KRF.


I have shared this one before, it is a Lovell Constricted point that was made from KRF. As you can see the one side was exposed to sunlight for some time as the under side you can still distinguish the KRF. As to the color orange and not white my take is that the minerals in the ground affected it's color.

 

[GatorBoy]

Some fine examples.. and well chosen for this..thank you.
It makes perfect sense the way you put it ..and it really reminds me of agatized coral ..the way it behaves.
Not so mysterious really.

 

[larson1951]

well gator your first image shows several things and btw some nice pieces
now the two on the right do not have a patina....what you see is the cortex or rind of the flint ball.............
........it is quite common for KRF scrapers to have a patch of the cortex left on them as it did not hurt the performance of the tool
if it was patination it would cover one or both complete sides of the tool or point
the blueish piece you have at the bottom is an extremely great example of the blueish stage of the process.....
......see how it covers the whole side?
the other two pieces have no patination.....they show the whitish color of the flint balls skin or cortex, or rind
if it was patination it would cover one or both entire sides even if it was in the early stages before it developed the classic beautiful blueish tdf color
if you wish i can post some different examples for your perusal.....i have some pretty cool looking old oxbow and duncan/hanna examples

 

[GatorBoy]

Please do Steve.
I actually added the ones with no patina as a baseline for comparison.
So..you are saying white is normally the first to show correct?

 

[larson1951]

yes the white would start to come first.....just a super thin layer starting
now the skin or cortex you can see is very thick sometimes up to 1/16th of an inch
i will get you some examples to study here in a litle bit

 

[quito]

The way this works is... the flint is basically brown to start. Fully patinated it is solid white. Early patination, when the white is at at early appearing, it gives the blue hue to the flint. It starts brown and ends white, the patina color changes in the process. The blue hue is likely proportionate to the amount of white covering it.

 

[quito]

In a nutshell it starts brown, gets nice frosty look with blue hue often, then turns solid white. It doesn't go from brown to white to blue. Those are three basics main steps in the color transformation . You can see the 3 I'm talking about in that dovetail plain as day.

 

[quito]

Solved?

 

[quito]

I've been trying to upload some KRF pictures to show, but the thing isn't letting them upload now.

What gives?

 

[quito]

cant see a thing Steve. no pics coming though.

 

[larson1951]

gotta find the webmaster
only one would load now....but they all show up when i first post them on the reply

 

[larson1951]

the first two images shoe three KRF scrapers....the 2 on the left show the rind or skin or cortex of the raw flint....it is a spot of the outside skin that was not removed when the scraper was made........
.......the scraper on the right side shows true patination .......see the diff? which all depends on where it laid and the substrate material or soil where it was and which side faced up or down the patination is slowly covering the newly flaked material at a very slow rate and can vary quite a bit in color .....
......and also vary from one side of the artifact to the other



these two are 4000-6000 year BP duncan/hanna types and i am showing the front and back



this is a 4000-6000 BP point and i am not sure of the type...but it shows how different the front and back of a point.....
.......now which is REALLY the front and which is REALLY the back?

now i just got these images to load on my Mac by going back to the iphoto library and cropping them
maybe the size was apparently too large ...and we should let the webmaster know that just exporting from the html or url does'nt work these days
this is the first time i have had any trouble loading

 

[quito]

Hmm, the pic that did take showed the hazing very nice. I think it is that same effect, the gradual whitening that brings about the new tint out of the brown, be it the orange like diggers area, or white like ours.

 

[painterx7]

Very interesting great information always trying to learn from you guys

 

[quito]

can you see the pix painter?

 

[painterx7]

Yes why can u not

 

[11KBP]

The majority of the KRF artifacts that I have seen or found in my region have a near absence of white patina due to the neutral soils but oftentimes they exhibit a very light lustrous haze or a light bluish surface haze. Those found in Nebraska rivers oftentimes attain a beautiful polish with the majority of pieces exhibiting no white patina, including those of paleo age.

 

[larson1951]

thanks 11KBP
that post you just put up is very interesting

 

[quito]

Thanks 11kbp very nice description of what we see up here.

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