I just started my journey with flintlocks this year but it didn't take me long to become frustrated with excessively thick Fuller flints and the relatively thin supply in general of this subset of an already niche market, not to mention expense and shipping costs. I'm fortunate to live where there is an abundance of chert, albeit pretty poor quality for the most part. The local chert does, however, make excellent gun flints after a fashion. There isn't much information on the internet about how flints are made but a couple of short youtube videos and a small book surfaced after a long search and I sort of figured out the process. My local rock is of a large variety of types, mostly comes from the river and, is in small pieces about potato sized on average. The blade spalling techniques used on good, commercial flint don't work very well on this stuff so I've been working out different methods of spalling flakes and blades from my local material. I've made around a thousand so far and am finally getting the hang of it, sort of. At least I can make exactly what I need to fit the different locks I have and optimize the shape to best interact with the frizzens. This chert is tougher on average than either English or French flint and lasts a lot longer on the softer L&R frizzens that tend to bite and shred the edges of the commercial flints to the point of having to be resharpened in only 8-12 shots.
Does anyone here knap their own flints? If so? Would you mind sharing any tips you may have?
