Flint Knapping Frequency

[jamieorr]

I wore out a flint yesterday, (real flint, not sawn) it stopped sparking and when I looked, the edge was so worn it was rounded. The edge is a little over 1/16th on an inch thick now, can this be knapped and made useful again?

When do you knap your flints, I need to start knapping, but don't want to knap too much or I might be wasting flint. I have no local supplier.

Cheers,

Jamie

 

[roundball]

I wore out a flint yesterday, (real flint, not sawn) it stopped sparking and when I looked, the edge was so worn it was rounded. The edge is a little over 1/16th on an inch thick now, can this be knapped and made useful again?

When do you knap your flints, I need to start knapping, but don't want to knap too much or I might be wasting flint. I have no local supplier.

Cheers,

Jamie

FYI, there are small grinding wheels with diamond dust imbedded in them...made to fit in a Dremel tool...goes through flint like its warm butter.
I clean & save all my worn flints in a jar, then on a rainy day or something, sit down with my Dremel and grind those thick edges down thinner.
Can't make them like new with full new life of course, but I certainly get more range life out of them than if I'd thrown them out when they first got some wear on them.

 

[garra]

I am ready to check out those diamond wheels. Thought I would experiment on a flint, just to see how to knap an edge. So far it is broken off, dull and thick. Believe I don't have the knack for knap yet. Tried the knap hammer and my just made flaking tool. I just don't know what or how to do this. Any books or instructions out there??? :surrender:

 

[roundball]

I am ready to check out those diamond wheels. Thought I would experiment on a flint, just to see how to knap an edge. So far it is broken off, dull and thick. Believe I don't have the knack for knap yet. Tried the knap hammer and my just made flaking tool. I just don't know what or how to do this. Any books of instructions out there??? :surrender:

Its not uncommon to be unsure of knapping at the beginning, usually then followed by a touch of embarrassment when we find out how stupid simple it is, LOL.

Imagine this approach...assumes right handed shooter:
1) Lay your flintlock on its belly on a bench or table;

2) Frizzen open / Hammer back at full cock, flint installed;

3) Standing behind the butt stock, put the front pad of the forefinger of your left hand across / under the front edge of the flint, lifting up on it with a little firmness (but not enough to lift the stock off the table).

4) Using something like a small brass rod about the size of a #2 wooden pencil, very lightly peck down on the top edge of the flint at about a 45* angle.

5)I do mine from left to right...4-5 peck, peck, pecks light enough so the brass rod wouldn't break a Robins egg if I was tapping on it.

6) When you take your left forefinger out from under the flint edge you'll see 4-5 tiny little flakes of flint that came loose everywhere the rod hit on top of the edge.

The end result of the bottom edge of the flint should look like a serrated cutting blade from an electric knife.

Here's a couple of very old photos simply to give you an idea of the shallow angle of the brass rod lightly pecking down on top of the front edge.
(I'm not holding my forefinger across under the flint in the photo because I had to hold the stock for the photo).

 

[garra]

Thanks for those photos. I went and bought a diamond wheel, he was right, goes through the flint like butter. cut the edge square and put a concave edge on it again. From what I am gathering, you don't require a sharp edge like a knife, but an angle that has a sharp corner on it. I tried your tapping method with the flint in a hand vise, cushioned with leather and tapped the edge. Tried the flaker and it seems to break of little edges too, but it is not sharp as a knife edge on a new flint, does have an edge that may spark, MAYBE?
Called for some OJT from a fellow club member who has been shooting flints for a long time.

This whole process makes one admire the skill it took for native tribes to make arrow heads and knifes, and we got new technology to help.

 

[M. De Land]

A level,thin, sharp edge is not what I like on my flints for longivity. I purposely make a serrated edge top and bottom.
The ridges are what strengthen the edge and keep it sharp longer because they control edge fracture.
They are stronger and last longer than a thin, straight sharp edge which is prone to fracture with out the reinforcing ridges of serration, especially if the cock angle is to shallow.
Serrated frizzens were made on some guns for preciesly the same reason to keep flints sparking from the serrated edges they formed in the flint face and increase frizzen face area they provided.

 

[M. De Land]

Great looking pressure flaker! You will probably want to make the shaft stick out about a half to three quarters of an inch so it won't bend on you.
Track of The Wolf sells a good book on flint knapping by D.C. Waldorf that will teach you how to pressure and percussor flake. It is one of the best books I have seen on the subject.

 

[garra]

MD, thanks for the compliment. This one has a copper about .205 thick, sticks out about an inch, seems pretty strong.
I was showing the picture to a old friend of mine. He was telling me about an old Indian he knew that would make arrow heads to sell to tourists made from the thick bottom of a beer bottle. He used a sycamore branch, he would burn it in half at a given point and then he would scrape the burnt end clean and sharp. He used that to tap the glass and form the arrow head.

It must have been a treat to watch someone forming an object using an original method. The most surprising thing was that he used wood to do the forming.

 

[M. De Land]

Yeah,a good dense hard wood should work just as well as an antler.
I've made arrow points out of bottle bottoms. I't a good way to get started into napping as they're cheap and plentiful. Glass knapps really easy compared to flint which it quite a bit harder and tougher.
Glass is an excellent medium for learning and expanding knapping skills.
The trouble with them though is they are usually concave and it's hard to work all of that out to get them nice and flat.
Here are a few of mine made of glass. The green one is a bottle bottom and the other are plate glass.The dark one is black obsidian.

 

[M. De Land]

Glass won't work at all as a gun flint because it just breaks up but it will train you how to make your own gun flints from chert and keep then sharp.
I'll never buy another and can make one in a few minutes from point flakes.
I keep all the flint size flakes off the point spawls just for gun flints.