ECSN

I'm trying to figure out how to make a Gorget like the one found at my ancestor's archology dig site....It is a gorget counch shell....I'm not sure how to make the shell flat

Here is the photo of the one found at the dig site.

Tibiki Kinew

How big is the shell? That is the first question, 2nd do you have a dremel? That is the main tool for cutting and shaping the shell to fit! Make sure the bit you are using is NEW and sharp, a dull bit will shatter the shell and you will not be a happy camper! If yo do not have a dremel, the Rotozip tool works too, but here be careful with the speed and angle of the rotary cutter!!! I have cut lots of shells and bones in the past 8 years!

just remember one thing PAITENCE!!!!

__________________
Listen to my heart, not just my mouth! The most powerfull thing we can do is,,,share,,, if we don't it dies with us.

The Children are our Future, without them we leave nothing behind but our silence...

Listen to the wind,,, it has so many secrets.... especially never assume who I am, you may get a surprize you are not ready for! Remember being Heyoka doesn't mean I am crazy, just having fun!!!
Born in Winnipeg raised in the Pikwakanagan, Deutschland was never home!

NancyJo

You might check out Knokovtee Scott..........he's a master shell worker. He has a video out "The Strength of Life: Knokovtee Scott - Creek Shellworker".
He does awesome shell work!! The video is very informative.

BeadMan

I klnow that horn spoons and bone roach spreaders are bent using hot water. But these materials are protine and chell is mostly calcium so I'm not sure about it's properties of being shaped like this. I think these shells could have been from very large shells where the wall of the shell is quite thick. A thin, flat piece could be cut or shaved down from a thick curved piece by shaving the center or the down curved side and shaving the edges of the up curved side. I have no idea if this is "the way" it was done, only pure speculation as to how to get a flat piece of shell.

Also, are you sure that the archaeological piece is conch shell? It may be another species that is naturally more flat than conch. Good luck.

Tibiki Kinew

Nice, looks more like abelone, they are big enough to work with, you can even use a bench top sander to do a lot of the shaping on these. Use a fine grit belt, no rough stuff!!! Like I said it will shatter and when it does the pieces fly!!! So wear protective goggles!!! Serious okay??? Do not attempt this without them.

There are lots of projects that you can do with the cut - offs, think pendants and earring pieces, if the parts are big enough you can suspend them in a dream catcher too!!!

__________________
Listen to my heart, not just my mouth! The most powerfull thing we can do is,,,share,,, if we don't it dies with us.

The Children are our Future, without them we leave nothing behind but our silence...

Listen to the wind,,, it has so many secrets.... especially never assume who I am, you may get a surprize you are not ready for! Remember being Heyoka doesn't mean I am crazy, just having fun!!!
Born in Winnipeg raised in the Pikwakanagan, Deutschland was never home!

OLChemist

I too would question whether the shell is conch or not. However, heavy harvesting has reduced the size of conch shells significantly. You might try something else.

If you really want the look of conch and don't want to use the shell of an animal that is being over-harvested, a very good looking substitute can be made with polymer clay. I use fake shell on dolls and such.

Before you cut your shell, buy an N-95 nuisance dust mask at your hardware store. And please wear it while you work. Shell dust is not something you want to breathe.

ECSN

cool thanks for the replies.

It is counch shell.

The center design is the trader symbol. Mine would be 3 arrows. Occaneechi town was a big village for traders on the east coast. Usually the trader symbol would have been on the right shoulder blade...but I guess from this finding then I guess it was also worn on gorgets.....I'm not so sure about wearing the gorget though because gorgets among the eastern siouan tribes was worn by people that was adopted to tribes (when someone died in the tribe they was allowed to adopted someone from outside the tribe and this person would wear the gorget). I'm not positive if this is the adoption gorget but it looks like it, it was found on a small child in a burial at occaneechi town. I want to make one just for cultural preservation purposes.

The second one looks exactly like the big horn stone wheel...almost a perfect match (lakota, Dakota, and Nakota being our cousins so I guess this would fit right.....my tribe even had some of the same words as the Dakota).

The counch shell would have been from the east coast beaches.

For the sizes of these gorgets...it would go by the little measurement under each of the photos.

The hole in the larger one is slightly elongated and appears to have once been two holes so close together that after some wear they broke through, making the two holes one. The designs on both of the pendants are of the drilled-dot technique.

The swastika style design (sometimes known as the four winds) I noticed on a powhatan sketch...this sketch also had the 3 arrows....since this symbol is almost the same as the one on letter "E" I would think it is one of the tribe's trader marks.

ECSN

You can also see the gorget being worn in the above sketch....so maybe it's not the adoption gorget.

Here is a medicine wheel one found at Town creek (The Pee Dee tribe)....this was found about a hr or 2 away from occaneechi town's site.

ECSN

Ok I just read some more on these

::On the concave side, and emanating from the central perforation, is a six-pronged star design made of punctations. Encircling the end of these prongs seems to be two, possibly three, circles of punctations, the inner circle(s) made up of larger depressions than the outer and partially eroded circle of small dot-like punctations.::

It does not look too concave to me.....and this person that reproduced these before refered to them as flattened counch shells.

I've never done a gorget before..only bead work...

The Buffalo horn spoon had a interesting story...it was said that if any poision touched it then it would break.


Anyway here is some stuff that described the stuff found at the occaneechi town site, might help in understanding what these two gorgets was made from.

During the Late Prehistoric period (as evidenced by the nearby Wall site), many native ornaments were made from the columella, or central columns, of large marine gastropods. These probably were taken from species of the Melogenidae (Crown Conch) family which occur along the Atlantic seaboard from Massachusetts to Florida (Percy 1972). Small disk beads, gorgets, and pendants were made from the outer whorl of these large univalves. A small univalve called marginella (of the Marginellidae family) which occurs along the coast from the West Indies to the southern beaches of North Carolina (Percy 1972) was also used as a form of ornament.


On the whole, the coastal univalves were the source material for the greatest proportion of ornaments. To a much lesser extent bivalve shells (presumably mussel) and stone fragments were made into small disk beads, and native copper and mica were used for other types of ornaments.


By the time the Fredricks site was occupied by the Occaneechi, many of the previously available bead forms (pendants, tubes, and sphericals) had been modified and others (columella segments and marginellas) had been all but dropped from use. Several new types--runtees and cylinder/barrels made from columella, and wampum made from quahogs (Mercenaria mercenaria)--had appeared. Quahogs occur from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Florida (Percy 1972). Although small disk beads appear to have retained both their form and function through this time, they too show indications of the impact of European influence.

(These 2 gorgets was found at the fredricks site, also I don't think this was a occaneechi gorget because Occaneechi used a serpant symbol instead of the swastika symbol)

ECSN

now see on this shell....I'm not seeing how I would make it so that it has that flat type look in the first two photos...

ECSN

Here is a guy I've seen work done by and impressed with....

Home

wyo_rose

It looks like it would be cut from where the shell flares out (lighter colored part)...probably from a very old, very large, very thick shell.

There's no way to flatten a shell that's curved. You just cut the curved part away from the flat part.

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Don't take life so seriously!
It's not permanent.

ECSN

yea thats what I was thinking also.....I just do not want to mess up a bunch of them before I figure out that i'm doing something wrong...conch shells are hard to come by here...about a 4 hr drive to the beach and gas ain't cheap lol