Beamer (Flesher)

A beamer is a hide-working tool made from a deer cannon bone (metapodial). A groove or long oval slot was rubbed into one face of the shaft until about the middle third of the shaft was cut away, and the inner edges on each side were bevelled to form two sharp scraping edges (Bell 1980). Strictly, a flesher is a different tool, a toothed bone gouge, but the two names are often run together (Hodge 1910).

The beamer was resharpened by grinding on an abrader or trimming with a small hammerstone. With use the scraping edges become more and more concave, and wear thins the middle until the tool snaps, so most finds are halves (Bell 1980).

The beamer was held at both ends like a drawknife and pushed or pulled along a hide laid over a small pole to take off the hair (Bell 1980). On the Plains, flesh and fat were cut away with a serrated gouge made from the leg bone of a large animal, later of iron, and hair was removed with a short adze of wood or elk antler set with a stone or iron blade (Hodge 1910). The key trait is a deer cannon bone with a slot worn through the shaft and two bevelled, concave scraping edges.

Eastern Woodlands, including Woodland and Fort Ancient sites in Kentucky, and the southern Plains (Washita River focus, central and western Oklahoma) (Applegate 2008; Henderson 2008; Bell 1980).

Look for the slot through the middle of the shaft with bevelled edges and use polish, or a broken half with one concave bevelled edge. An unfinished split cannon-bone awl blank lacks the concave outline, bevel and polish (Bell 1980). A hide grainer is a flattened lump of spongy bone, not a grooved shaft (Bell 1980); Hodge (1910) describes a graining tool cut from a humerus. A bison tibia flesher or digging-stick tip has a toothed or pointed end rather than two edges at mid-shaft (Bell 1980). Choctaw hide workers likewise laid a soaked skin over a smoothed log and scraped it with a drawknife-like tool, by then of metal (Hodge 1910). Chipped stone end scrapers did similar work before beamers spread in Kentucky (Applegate 2008).