Fig. 159.—Flint-bladed reamers.
[Hammers.]—
At the present day nearly every man has been able to procure an iron hammer of some kind, which he uses with great handiness. Before the introduction of iron, in addition to the bone and stone mauls above described as bone crushers, unhafted pebbles of convenient shape were also employed. No. 56661 [274] is such a stone. It is an ovoid water-worn pebble of greenish gray quartzite, 3½ inches long. The ends are battered, showing how it had been used. It was brought from one of the rivers in the interior by one of the natives of Utkiavwĭñ.
[Files.]—
Files of all kinds are eagerly sought after by the natives, who use them with very great skill and patience, doing nearly all their metal work with these tools. For instance, one particularly ingenious native converted his Winchester rifle from a rim fire to a central fire with nothing but a file. To do this he had to make a new firing pin, as the firing pin of the rim-fire gun is too short to reach the head of the cartridge. He accomplished this by accurately cutting off, to the proper length, an old worn-out three-cornered file. He then filed off enough of each edge so that the rod fitted evenly in the cylindrical hole where the firing pin works. The work was done so carefully that the new firing pin worked perfectly, and he had only to complete the job by cutting off his central fire cartridge shells to a proper length to fit the chamber of the gun.
Fig. 160.—Flint-bladed reamer.