Toolmark variability and quality depending on the fundamental parameters: Angle of attack, toolmark depth and substrate material.

The traditional way of visual toolmark comparison includes subjective judgments. Automated methods using computers are a possibility to render a comparison more objective, but they require the statistical properties, like the similarity and variability, of toolmarks to be determined quantitatively. Several parameters, that play a role during toolmark creation, are statistically analyzed in this article. We determined the same toolmark and the different toolmark similarity as well as variability of known matching toolmarks created in wax and compared the results with the similarity and variability of known non-matching toolmarks. In addition we studied the influence of the substrate materials wax and lead and the angle of attack on toolmark similarity and variability. Furthermore, we present an approach to determine toolmark quality, defined as how well structural details are preserved in the toolmark, to assist toolmark examiners in deciding, which structural details are reliable in a mark. We studied the influence of the substrate material, the angle of attack and the depth of a toolmark on the quality. The results show that for known matching toolmarks, the variability is very low within a toolmark and between toolmarks in wax, given that the parameters angle of attack and depth are held constant. Geometrical details are reliably represented down to 10-50μm and toolmark similarity is clearly higher than known non-matching similarities. The comparison of wax and lead shows that wax is a good alternative as a substrate material for experimental toolmarks, capable of reliably representing structural details down to 10-25μm. For finer details, lead is a better choice but might alter the original state of a tool. With increasing angle of attack, toolmark variability increases and toolmark quality decreases. Therefore it is advantageous to push the tool instead of pulling during toolmark creation for angles of attack above ≈45°. The quality also decreases with increasing toolmark depth, but only up to ≈300μm. Therefore toolmarks should be created as shallow as possible in the substrate material.