I can collect good chert here in Crow Creek, along with arrow heads and shark teeth. The problem with me is, I haven't figured out yet how to knap into usable flints.
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Chert
- Thread starter Gvilleddie
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it is easy! just start with a spall about 6 times larger than the flint you want, and in the immortal words of someone, bash away every thing that don't look like your intended flint!
and when you have it shaped just perfect and think you are going to just sharpen it a little, it breaks in half. sooooooo you find another spall that is about.............
oh yeah! first requirement. a box of band aids.
Rock Home Isle
54 Cal.
I can manage a gun flint from raw stone, if needed…I’ve done it many times for many years. But I just don’t have proficient skill at it. So yeah, something new to learn.
Well now I have ~50 lbs to practice with…and you have a whole creek bed. No time like the present.
Rock Home Isle
54 Cal.
I must’ve cut my hand a dozen times today, as I whacked pieces of flint to try to determine the quality and knappability of the stone. Those cuts weren’t even noticed until we stopped for lunch, and I went to the bathroom to wash my hands.
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Chert is bad, what with sharp spalls and such, but Obsidian is wicked!
I had a sliver so thin i needed a magnifying lens to get ahold of it with forceps. it was 5/16" long and went through a heavy cowhide glove, my tough old buzzard skin and full length into my thumb.
wife thought i had just nicked myself again until she saw that spine of glass! bled like i had been throat cut!
here i a video of me making small pieces of chert out of larger pieces of chert.
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For all you Arkansans,
Arkansas Novaculite: A Virtual Comparative Collection is mostly central Arkansas in the Ouachita orogeny areas.
One can also find this stuff along the Kings River, Upper and Middle Buffalo River areas as well.
These road cuts are all up and down HWYs 71, 49 and 65.
East to West would be 412, 62, 45, 16 and 74.
RM
Arkansas Novaculite: A Virtual Comparative Collection is mostly central Arkansas in the Ouachita orogeny areas.
One can also find this stuff along the Kings River, Upper and Middle Buffalo River areas as well.
These road cuts are all up and down HWYs 71, 49 and 65.
East to West would be 412, 62, 45, 16 and 74.
RM
A little off subject, but I would like to add a data point. Here on my farm in East Tennessee there is a small knoll on which I have found small piles of flint chips where Indians made arrowheads. There must have been generations of flint knappers who lived there and practiced the craft. The land around is littered with arrowheads as well. A large river runs nearby and the hunting was probably good then as now.
If one recalls, years ago MZL member Rich Pierce sold knapped 'chert' flints that he knapped himself, sourced from nodules where he lived in MS (if I remember correctly). I bought a ton - they worked well!
One interesting point, at least from my experience when I was shootin' up to 10-pounds of powdah a year, when they stopped working - it was a complete & total failure to spark, whereas with Tom Fuller English flints I'll notice a degredation in sparks.
One interesting point, at least from my experience when I was shootin' up to 10-pounds of powdah a year, when they stopped working - it was a complete & total failure to spark, whereas with Tom Fuller English flints I'll notice a degredation in sparks.
I have also done some work near Hilham area and the Roaring River in Tennessee, I found a bunch or large useable pieces.
RM
RM
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a mask makes my glasses fog. fogged glasses make me hit my fingers. hitting my fingers makes me say things that offend the wife. offending the wife is more deadly than silicosis.
i have a small fan or sit in a cross draft. many types of chert don't produce much dust, but its prudent for young guys to take precautions.
tell us old guy's "it will kill you" and we ask "When!".
Yep, live in Georgetown....I no longer collect these flints....going the extra mile to collect them is superfluous as a quick walk in the woods behind our house will fill a wheelbarrow !
Rock Home Isle
54 Cal.
You are too lucky
bldtrailer
Pilgrim
my work area aprox 80% waist
That is a GREAT assortment of Georgetown Chert! Technically it is not flint because historically "flint" is the black/dk gray chert known as "flint" found in the UK and some other parts of Europe. The "flint" found in France is a different chert in a amber color. Some of the chert found in the US is also entirely white. There's a fair amount of different knappable chert across the US.
I taught fly-fishing schools in the Owens River Valley near Mammoth Lakes and walked past large amounts of Obsidian for years before realizing what it was. Then I started picking up knappable pieces. Obsidian is obvious once its cracked open but a lot of times just looks like somewhat pitted rock. It was everywhere on the ranch were we taught schools because the Owens River Valley is actually a caldera. That means it had a massive magma field under it and as volcanic action pushed the white Mountains up on the Northeast side, the surface sank down where the magma field had been and created the Owens River Valley. So there were bits and pieces of obsidian everywhere because Obsidian is formed from lava that cools quickly.
My wife and my brother both gave me a bunch of manure about moving my 100-lb "box of rocks" with me when we moved from Virginia to Washington state. Of course I had carried a 2½ boxes of rocks from California to Vermont and about 1¾ boxes from Vermont to Virginia when I was transferred there. I was actually down to just one box coming to Washington, which I thought was pretty good.
If coal sparked miners would have had bronze picks and shovels.
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You're lucky boys, those of you who can just pick up flint (or chert) where you live. I had to buy an expensive box a while back and have managed to create an impressive pile of worthless chips and chards and blood-stained debris from it, along with a few useable gun-flints and two (count 'em: two) blades that were worth hafting to antler tines. Amazing that humans at one point just figured out how to make useful stone tools, isn't it?
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my wife calls knapping, "making sand the hard way". but when the gods smile, the planets align, Scorpio is in Gemini, and the effort all comes together, i can produce something that makes me smile. others may just shrug, but i treasure it. wish i lived where there was chert just laying about!
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I have a chip, I hesitate to call it a knapped flint in my 36 that has worked for about 30 shots so far. With the paucity of caps available I feel pretty smug about that. Of course flintlocks and muzzleloading has a way of bringing one back to reality in short order.
Snydly
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Nice video. Now if you can get them to send me some samples...say a gunnysack full.........
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