picking up flint

[Ames]

I cant identify flint unless it comes in a little plastic bag.

 

[William Sublette]

has anyone tried obsidian? Is it too brittle?

 

[Grenadier1758]

Yes, obsidian is too brittle. Its not a good candidate for gun flints.

 

[spudnut]

My buddy picks up suitable rocks in parking lot gravel all the time, not always flint but it sparks in his smoothbore

 

[oldarmy]

I don't agree that hard black Arkansas will not spark well
I had Norton company cut a number for me
They all worked fine we couldn't make them cheap enought to market but here is my historical collection

 

[oldarmy]

The funny thing about them is the flatter the edge gets the better they spark

 

[Rifleman1776]

I don't agree that hard black Arkansas will not spark well
I had Norton company cut a number for me
They all worked fine we couldn't make them cheap enought to market but here is my historical collectionView attachment 24312

Glad the novaculite worked for you. I couldn't get even feeble sparks from it with a variety of quality locks. I once considered selling but the wholesale prices were not low enough to make a profit and some market research among experienced flint shooters indicated sales would be very poor at best. FWIW, I once sold jewelry made from Arkansas quartz. On the hardness scales quartz is right up there with flint. But, like the novaculite, trying quartz in a lock wouldn't produce worthwhile sparks. Oh well, one tries.

 

[smoothshooter]

Not all flint is created equal. In my area it crumbles before flaking. Not suitable for knapping. But about 75 miles south of me there is, reportedly, some great knapping flint. A few hundred miles NE of me in the St. Louis is same great white flint. But, yes, if it were worth the bother, I would pick up flint and try knapping.

In northern Stone County, southwest Missouri, in the Crane, Galena, and Hurley areas there is some pretty good white chert that knaps decently and sparks as good as English flint. You don’t even have to dig for it. It is commonly just laying on the top of the ground in cattle and horse pastures. All shapes and sizes, the most useable are somewhere between fist and small cantaloupe sizes. Some chunks are rather flat and two or three inches thick and eight to twelve inches long.
I know of several fields where it is hard to drive through without running a tire over one or more every twenty or thirty feet. When the grass is down they are visible two hundred yards or more away.
Make good long range rifle and pistol targets when shooting from one hillside to the next. Even more fun than fresh cow piles!

 

[Gun Tramp]

some pretty good white chert that knaps decently and sparks as good as English flint.

I envy you folks with raw materials at hand. Slim pickins where I'm at but high quality chert when found is great to work with. I wish some of the brits would chime in; they build houses of knapped flint.

 

[ike]

The novaculite deposits and mine are localized in the Hot Springs area which is almost 200 miles SW of where I am. Sparking success with purchased novaculite flints has been poor at best.

If I lived in northern Arkansas there is lots of black Arkansas novculite
Makes a great Flint
Cut some when I worked for the old norton Pike in northern nh

I live in Hot Springs in the winter. I buy novacilite from a local manufacture who heat treat left over waste pieces and used them for knaping. I make arrow heads and stone tools with this material and then use the left over chips fpor rifle flints. They work great. Never run out of gun flints. Some times I get thirty plus shots from a single flint. Ike

 

[Griz44Mag]

I too have gone parking lot and landscape browsing and have found good flint materials. Anyplace where riverrock has been used for landscaping.
My issue, after many hours of breaking rocks I have managed to get 3 or 4 decent flints hammered out, and I have a 30 pound pile of broken rocks to dispose of.
I went back to buying them.

 

[Gun Tramp]

I found this while arrowhead hunting and at first thought it was a gunflint.
Nice material but only 7/8" square and it appears to have been knapped from a reduction flake rather than a core as I understand gunflints are. About 3/16" thick.

 

[Jay Templin]

There are some chart pits in the Pass. Haven't gotten around to checking it out.

Anybody have much experience using chert? I understand it can be used.

I've made a handful from novaculite- it's a type of chert, like flint, and we used to get it by the barrel from a guy in Texas for knapping demonstrations at the museum. I found that it sparks incredibly well, but breaks more easily than good black gunstock flint. How much of that is the rock and how much is that they were my first flints? Your guess is as good as mine.

 

[Eric Krewson]

I have picked up flint around my house to try, most of it is a little course in appearance and not glassy smooth. It would probably benefit from heat treating but I haven't tried this so far, it doesn't spark worth a hoot. I have searched the little creek down in the hollow and only turned up one small piece of flint that was light blue in color, I turned that one piece into a gunflint, it sparked better than anything I have ever had in my guns, English, Rich Pierce, all of them. I have never been able to find any more pieces like it.

 

[tenngun]

You guys aware that one of the more popular trade items the French and the English traded with the Indians were gun flints? Having made stone tools for eons, the Indians quickly realized the imported flints were superior to anything they could pick up and make on their own.

That’s a real good point. We know local flint was used in guns but French and English flint was a big import.
Where did the USArmy get it’s flint? I don’t recall reading of a flint production in America. But the town of Gunflint (Mi ?) was named after the fine flint in the area.
Was it magic? White mans flint in white mans gun. Was it convenient? I know I buy most of my flints even though it grows wild around me. It seems I get more shots off a store bought flint then from chips I’ve made my self. Was it just ulitarian?

 

[tenngun]

has anyone tried obsidian? Is it too brittle?

Won’t spark well. I was in the Seattle area and picked up a good hunk os obsidian for fire starting. I couldn’t get a spark off of it. It shattered real easy.

 

[smoothshooter]

How many on here pick up your own flint when you're out in the wild? My wife and I like to take our grandsons out to picnic areas nearby when the weather is nice and there is usually a stream that they can play in. I'd like to learn to recognize flint and be able to pick it up to try my hand at knapping it into useable pieces for my flintlock rifle, like my late grandfather did. I will be watching some Youtube videos I suppose, and carrying a file with me on the picnic trips.

Stone and Christian Counties in Southwest Missouri south of Springfield have good white chert in “nuisance quantities” that knaps okay and sparks very well.
I don’t consider myself a knapper, per se, but I am usually able to bust out a few useable spalls using this chert in 15-20 minutes’ time if I want to. I have some fist-sized chunks sticking up out of the dirt a little bit in my yard that I need to dig out and toss over the fence before I hit them with the lawnmower and chip the blades. Have already picked up about a third of a 5 gallon bucket full of white chert chunks in the last 10 months since we bought this place.

 

[GREENSWLDE]

At a time some years ago we used to try the Gun Flint shaped ground Agate but never worked any where near as well as Hand Knapped Brandon Black stuff we had from the old chap in Brandon or later from Tom Fuller.Cross their palm with Silver and they would select to your sample. Still have some I bought from Tom. I keep them in my safe.LOL.. OLD DOG..

 

[TFoley]

I live next door to Norfolk where half the older building are made of flint - it's part of the rural landscape. With Brandon just down the road, it has often seemed that NOT having a flintlock of some kind is some kind of a crazy oversight.

 

[GREENSWLDE]

Checking my old records the chap in Brandon, Norfolk was Herbert Edwards. There is an Old Shell Craftsmen Film showing him working. I think it came up on UTUBE..Flint Knappers ,Brandon,Norfolk 1940. Shewn in 2012. OLD DOG..