Tools and Wear

Every edge is a debt to the stone it came from. Use it, and the stone collects.

Which tool does which work, and how use wears them down.

A tool is what stands between your hands and the land. Each does certain work, and each wears with use.

What each tool does

• Hammer. Strikes flakes when knapping, cuts marks when carving, drives pegs, grinds bone. A flint knife can serve as a hammer.
• Chisel. Held in your other hand when knapping or carving. A flint chisel, a bone chisel, or a small bone.
• Blade. Butchers what you kill and cuts at the slab. The flint knife. To butcher, it must be in your main hand.
• Axe. Bites into trees and strips their bark. Anything else barely marks a tree.
• Fire-starters. Flint, chert or pyrite, one in each hand. See Making Fire.
• Cord and peg. For binding laid branches. See Bindings.

The bone awl, the hide scraper, the shovel and the saw have been made, but their work is still being built.

How tools wear

Every tool keeps count of the work it does.

• Every swing or strike wears it a little.
• Breaking a block wears it more.
• A blow to a living creature wears it most.
• Every flake you knap wears the hammer.
• A thrown spear wears where it lands.
• Some things wear each time they are soaked through.

A flint tool is good for about two thousand flakes, two hundred blocks, or thirty blows to a creature.

Things that break

Pots and some built things break when they wear out: drop them hard, throw them, or strike them. A clay pot breaks into shards. With a hammer in hand, a click on a pot strikes it instead of lifting it, so mind what you hold.