Flint Knapping

[Billnpatti]

Bo, there's no need for a kit. You have plenty of flint laying around on the ground. All you need is a hammer stone. go to your nearest nursery and find some of those nice round river stones that the landscapers use. Find one or two the will fit your hand. They should be about the size of a baseball. Next, you need an antler tip. some folks like to use a piece of copper rod that they stick in the end of a dowel to do the fine knapping. Search around in places like river beds or where roads are being built for chunks of hard glassy looking stone. When you find it, put on some safety glasses and leather gloves (very important). Then find a place to work where people won't walk on your chips. They are actually sharper than glass. Strike a glancing blow on the flint chunk and knock off pieces of flint. You will find that at first you will likely have to knock off a lot of pieces before you finally get the feel for it and start getting usable pieces. What you are looking for are large chips. Once you have a usable chip, you will have to knap it into a gun flint. For this, you will need a knee pad. If you have a large piece of 5 or 6 ounce leather, it is perfect. If, as most of don't, you can use some folded canvas for your knee pad. Hold the chip on your knee and use the antler tip or copper rod to pressure flake it into a usable shape. Do this by placing the antler tip on the edge of the chip and pressing down to cause a small flake to break off the larger flake. Keep doing this until you have it worked into the shape that you want.

There are books and videos that will show you the techniques but it mostly practice that will get you making gun flints from stone that you find laying around in river beds or roads. The ranch that I shoot on, has put down some gravel for their roads and I can find plenty of nice flakes that require a minimum of shaping to turn them into usable gun flints.

 

[Woodyrock]

Agate, jasper, flint and chert, as well as obsidian will all make sparks. Obsidian makes beautiful looking gun flints but only works for a couple of shots. Any silica rock that will break with a conchoidal fracture will make gun flints. This means a fracture scar that looks like a clams shell showing the rings.

 

[Rick Son]

It was too late by the time i figured out what those huge rocks in grandpas yard were They tor it down and hualed everything off,but i did save a piece,took it to a lapidary class and made cabachon from it,then i got into black powder and figgered out from reading here what it was,makes a darn nice cabachon necklace though.all of that flint gone to the dump.

 

[Kabo1313]

Thanks so much, Billnpatti. What others do not realize is OUR area has NO stones....our area is gumbo and lots of it. Our areas' biggest question is..."How many cracks do you have in your house?" because of all the gumbo we have. I have been asking everyone I know if they have a West, or possibly central, Texas ranch where they could find me a large flint stone to start experimenting/practicing on. I have one friend who says he brought back one several years back. He might give it so to me at church tomorrow. And, thanks for the info on knapping. :thumbsup:

 

[M. De Land]

I took receipt of a box of Chert today for progress in learning how to knapp arrow points and decided to see how it worked for gun flints finding some of the chips large enough to experiment with. I was told by the person selling the spawls that heat treated chert would not work for gun flints.
I decided to video a comparative test and give you all a look see.
http://s224.photobucket.com/user/mdeland_photos/media/MVI_0299_zps35489b76.mp4.html

 

[M. De Land]

I forgot to mention in the last post that perhaps longevity is the issue with heat treated chert. It will take some time to see if that is an issue although I thought chert was tougher than is the English flints. MD

 

[Billnpatti]

No, English and French flint is better than local chert even though flint and chirt are essentially the same thing. Actual flint is formed in odd shaped nodules and is found in chalk deposits The chirt that we find in the U.S. will do a good job but will not give you as many shots as either the English flint or the French flint. It just doesn't last as long between re-knapping. I don't think there is a significant difference between the French and the English flints but the French flints usually cost more.

BTW, I found a chunk of what appears to be a member of the chirt family. It is hard glossy gray rock that is about the size of a cantaloupe. I'm going to give it a few test whacks to see if it breaks in a conchoidal fracture. If it does, all I will have to do is find a box to send it to you. A rock that size will probably weigh around 10 pounds so I will need a pretty sturdy box to ship it. I expect that shipping it to Alaska is going to be around $15 to $20 but they may surprise me and want more. I'll let you know if it is worth sending and if it is, I'll let you know when I send it and how much the shipping costs are.

 

[rich pierce]

There is so much variability in chert that it is probably not safe to say that all of it is inferior to English or French flint. The simple reasons that English and French are used are their abundance, ease of mining and ease of knapping, none of which affect performance.

 

[nwtradegun]

check this site has all inhttp://www.flintknappers.com/store.php?sid=MjQ%3Dfo you need

 

[M. De Land]

Here are a couple of the point's made from the chert flakes shown in the video that were mentioned.
This is really nice Chert and knaps very well both percussion and pressure flaking.
I think I will do another short video some time on how to pressure flake a gun flint and a couple of tools used that are easily made.
It looks to me from preliminary trials that pressure flaking to sharpen a gun flint is a better mouse trap. Mike D.