He could preshape the stone so that the flakes he knapped off would have the size and shape he wanted.

With it, she knocked off the outer chalky-gray cortex of the small nodule of flint, in the process beginning to preshape it.

Under this scheme, in order to encode scanned images into Photo CD file, the first step is to preshape the RGB data via a non-linear transform:

As she began to preshape the flint in the Clan way, and the Mamutoi flint knappers realized what she was doing, they were eager to watch, and crowded as close as they dared.