Chert

[flconch53]

View attachment 142587
I have to admit…I’m learning a lot about taking bigger rocks and making them into smaller rocks.

Bandaids are also pretty nice to have around

View attachment 142589
Some limited progress has been made. I don’t think it’s been bad…I’m having fun, enjoying the conversation, and making a few useable flints. Not sure how many shots I’d get from them, but useable just the same

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The work area. I’m definitely making more waste than actual product.

I found that a leather glove helped make the learning a little less bloody. I can make a usable flint but nothing great.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

I found that a leather glove helped make the learning a little less bloody. I can make a usable flint but nothing great.

Oh trust me…I know that now.

Next time we sit down and chip rocks, I’ll be wearing at least a glove on the hand that holds the rock. I could not believe all the micro-cuts. The flint is so incredibly sharp, you don’t even feel it when you are cut, it just becomes more difficult to hold the flint because the blood is making it slick and slippery.

My hat’s off to our Stone Age ancestors

 

[springfield art]

I used to work at a paleoindian archaeological site at a chert quarry on the Savannah River. Some of the others there could make a beautiful Clovis point, but when they tried to make a gun flint for me, it was only marginally successful. They are two very different concepts of flint knapping.

Just makes me muchly appreciate being able to send a few bucks and get nice French or English pre-made flints from one of the fine dealers that advertise in Muzzle Blasts or Muzzleloader! I'm not a mototcyclist, nor a Flint Napper! Kudos to those that do try it! (The Savannah is the river thru Augusta, Ga., right?)

 

[springfield art]

View attachment 142587
I have to admit…I’m learning a lot about taking bigger rocks and making them into smaller rocks.

Bandaids are also pretty nice to have around

View attachment 142589
Some limited progress has been made. I don’t think it’s been bad…I’m having fun, enjoying the conversation, and making a few useable flints. Not sure how many shots I’d get from them, but useable just the same

View attachment 142594
The work area. I’m definitely making more waste than actual product.

The bucket there makes me think of the old pirate saying, 'a bucket of blood'! Be safe!

 

[smoothshooter]

Chert is flint. The only distinction is to how it is found in the earth. Flint, as we often know it, is usually found as nodules, sometimes in chalk pits. Chert is found embedded in the earth in many locations. I'll admit I have never found chert that we suitable for knapping into gun flints.

I have made and used chert spalls with good success.
It is lying all over the place in parts of SW Missouri.
I have it embedded in the dirt in my yard.

 

[SlidePicker]

The flint nodules reminded me that when I was about 7 I went on a road trip to Arizona with my family, and in a roadside tourist trap we bought some "Apache Tears." I just read the Wikipedia article about these obsidian nodules found embedded in gray perlite. They have a lithologic name, "Marekanite."

On the Kettlefoot Gun Club range to which I belong is a graded flat on a hillside on which I have done much plinking over the years, before they built some sort of action pistol ranges and covered the bays with limestone gravel. One evening I noticed that bullets hitting the native rocks were making big showers of sparks just like the fake bullet strikes in movies! I looked at the rocks and decided they were chert. They weren't just sparking with steel containing unmentionable projectiles, either, but when hit with good old fashioned lead bullets as well.

 

[flconch53]

Just makes me muchly appreciate being able to send a few bucks and get nice French or English pre-made flints from one of the fine dealers that advertise in Muzzle Blasts or Muzzleloader! I'm not a mototcyclist, nor a Flint Napper! Kudos to those that do try it! (The Savannah is the river thru Augusta, Ga., right?)

The Savannah is the Georgia/South Carolina Border ending in Savannah

 

[Rock Home Isle]

In a couple weeks, I’ll be headed back down to Texas…see my son and collect another couple hundred pounds of flint. I still have about 20 lbs left, but yeah…given time I’ll pick it up

 

[burlesontom]

I live in Burleson just south of Ft Worth and if you go south down I-35 till you get around the town of West where they had the big explosion a few years ago you will start finding a lot of Chert/Flint just on top of the ground. I have picked up several pieces and tried knapping it into gun flints but so far they are not so great. The only flint lock I have ever shot was fired by a chert flake I made.

It was my buds gun he bought in a pawn shop but would never buy a flint for it so I made one and we shot it several times. It was cool. I have several percussion guns but never owned a flinter. If I can ever figure out how to make useable flints I will buy a flint lock. I would like to have at least on flintlock gun.

I thought about ordering one of the TVM rifles but don't want to wait a year to get it. I will eventually find a used one and buy it and then I will be on the dark side.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

I live in Burleson just south of Ft Worth and if you go south down I-35 till you get around the town of West where they had the big explosion a few years ago you will start finding a lot of Chert/Flint just on top of the ground. I have picked up several pieces and tried knapping it into gun flints but so far they are not so great. The only flint lock I have ever shot was fired by a chert flake I made.

It was my buds gun he bought in a pawn shop but would never buy a flint for it so I made one and we shot it several times. It was cool. I have several percussion guns but never owned a flinter. If I can ever figure out how to make useable flints I will buy a flint lock. I would like to have at least on flintlock gun.

I thought about ordering one of the TVM rifles but don't want to wait a year to get it. I will eventually find a used one and buy it and then I will be on the dark side.

Thank you very much.

Could you PM me more detailed information? On this trip, I’ll be coming down through Oklahoma, right through that area…I’d love to have a more discrete location to go to…

 

[Dusty_Traveler]

View attachment 134232
Here is an old nodule I found along the lake where we live north of Manhattan KS. I assume it was used by someone in the distant past to make flint tools. I’ve not tried to knap anything off of it because I don’t want to damage it. I’ve not found other flint like this one.

What a great find!!

 

[bldtrailer]

a cut restant glove will help still keep the bandaids handy

 

[burlesontom]

Thank you very much.

Could you PM me more detailed information? On this trip, I’ll be coming down through Oklahoma, right through that area…I’d love to have a more discrete location to go to…

Maybe this will help some others in the central Tx area. This is the PM I left Rock Home Isle.

"Hello. I just found your request for a map or information to some Texas flint. Here is a link to the Tx Georgetown rock quarry. There is supposed to be a vein of sorts with good Tx Chert. I can't say for sure because I haven't made it down there yet. The first thing I would do is visit this quarry and see if they will give/sell you some of the Chert. Its supposed to be a problem for them to grind and I bet they would give you a couple of 5 gallon buckets of it just to get rid of it. Heck maybe a truck bed full".

https://www.texascrushedstoneco.com/contact-us/map-directions/
https://texasbeyondhistory.net/plateaus/nature/images/georgetown.html

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Maybe this will help some others in the central Tx area. This is the PM I left Rock Home Isle.

"Hello. I just found your request for a map or information to some Texas flint. Here is a link to the Tx Georgetown rock quarry. There is supposed to be a vein of sorts with good Tx Chert. I can't say for sure because I haven't made it down there yet. The first thing I would do is visit this quarry and see if they will give/sell you some of the Chert. Its supposed to be a problem for them to grind and I bet they would give you a couple of 5 gallon buckets of it just to get rid of it. Heck maybe a truck bed full".

https://www.texascrushedstoneco.com/contact-us/map-directions/
https://texasbeyondhistory.net/plateaus/nature/images/georgetown.html

I never got that PM…I’m so glad you posted this…

Just outside of the Texas Crushed Stone Quarry there is a road that cuts through the ridge…huge chunks of Chert, sticking out of the limestone.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Wife flies out to Texas late tonight. I’ll drive down in a week or two and pick her up for the drive home. This trip, my dad wants to go with me, and we are planning on taking I-70 east into Kansas, then catch HWY-99 south, driving the flint ridge into Oklahoma, looking for roadside flint deposits.

In Texas I’ll be trying to collect nodules of flint, from the local area…again. Kinda fun messing with this stuff. My dad spends a lot of time making home made percussion caps for some of his muzzleloaders. I’m slowly converting my percussion guns into flintlocks and learning to knap.

Limiting factor…powder.

 

[1BadDart]

Wife flies out to Texas late tonight. I’ll drive down in a week or two and pick her up for the drive home. This trip, my dad wants to go with me, and we are planning on taking I-70 east into Kansas, then catch HWY-99 south, driving the flint ridge into Oklahoma, looking for roadside flint deposits.

In Texas I’ll be trying to collect nodules of flint, from the local area…again. Kinda fun messing with this stuff. My dad spends a lot of time making home made percussion caps for some of his muzzleloaders. I’m slowly converting my percussion guns into flintlocks and learning to knap.

Limiting factor…powder.

That's why my .40 build is set up for either a cap or flintlock, no dependence on caps.

I think the creek below my shop has chert rock in it, when it cools off a little I'll check it out.

 

[springfield art]

Just makes me muchly appreciate being able to send a few bucks and get nice French or English pre-made flints from one of the fine dealers that advertise in Muzzle Blasts or Muzzleloader! I'm not a mototcyclist, nor a Flint Napper! Kudos to those that do try it! (The Savannah is the river thru Augusta, Ga., right?)

Yeah, there's a Savannah River nuke plant near Aiken-Augusta. (Augusta is home of James Brown and Ft. Gordon)

 

[Troopertree]

I have been kayaking down the Llano River, I live near the Medina and Guadalupe. I have had boat full of chert nodules.

 

[Kabulrocks]

Wife flies out to Texas late tonight. I’ll drive down in a week or two and pick her up for the drive home. This trip, my dad wants to go with me, and we are planning on taking I-70 east into Kansas, then catch HWY-99 south, driving the flint ridge into Oklahoma, looking for roadside flint deposits.

In Texas I’ll be trying to collect nodules of flint, from the local area…again. Kinda fun messing with this stuff. My dad spends a lot of time making home made percussion caps for some of his muzzleloaders. I’m slowly converting my percussion guns into flintlocks and learning to knap.

Limiting factor…powder.

You will probably be going thru Pawhuska,OK. That’s where the pioneer woman shop is located, but even cooler is that is where an upcoming movie was recently filmed. “Killers of the Flower Moon”, a true story. Also near there is Frank Phillips’ (Phillips 66) Woolaroc museum. And of course my favorite, the J.M. Davis Gun Museum in Claremore.
I don’t have any chert honey holes, I’m on the prowl for those too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killers_of_the_Flower_Moon_(film)https://www.woolaroc.org/https://www.woolaroc.org/museum#museum_firearmshttps://www.thegunmuseum.com/

 

[burlesontom]

I never got that PM…I’m so glad you posted this…

Just outside of the Texas Crushed Stone Quarry there is a road that cuts through the ridge…huge chunks of Chert, sticking out of the limestone.

I'm glad posted it in the forum. I probably didn't do something right on the PM. Who knows. Anyway if you find the name or number on that road please post it. I may take a drive down there and see if I can dig out some of that flint. Maybe with better material I can learn to knap flints.

Thankfully I have around 8,000 caps and 40+ pounds of powder so loads for my cap locks are no problem. I stocked up a long time ago. I'm glad I did now.