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The upper background of
the painting depicts a man working the ancient quarry on the mountain Mauna
Kea. The worker swings a large hammer stone between his legs against the edge
of a basalt boulder core. If struck correctly, large flakes are produced of
which some may be selected as adze blanks.
At upper left an adze
(ko'i) is being shaped by a craftsman using a small hammer stone to
remove flakes from both faces of a blank. This work was usually done at the
quarry, after which the roughly shaped blanks were carried down the
mountainside to the workplace of a master.
In the foreground, a master
craftsman does the final flaking to produce the distinctively "shouldered"
shape of the Eastern Polynesian adze. Each flake sets up further flaking by
leaving what may be called a striking platform against which the next blow of
the hammer stone may fall. As the size of the flakes becomes smaller, the
overall shape of the adze becomes more refined.
After the final
flaking, a craftsman (at left) grinds the adze against a wetted slab of
fine-grained stone, using as grinding mediums pastes of various abrasives mixed
with water, with more water added at intervals. An hour or two of grinding was
required to produce flat faces that tapered to a sharp blade. Tools dulled by
use were sharpened by further grinding.
The figure at right is
lashing an adze to a haft carved from a section of a tree branch from which a
thinner branch, the handle, has grown at an angle of approximately 70 degrees.
The stone is set against a shock-absorbing cushion of bark cloth, and lashed up
with braided sennit.
Page 92, Ancient Hawaii
Link to mini-tour of Old Hawaii