picking up flint

[JBrandon]

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..

Edwards organized a small group of knappers in Brandon into the 1960s. The last of these still working was Fred Avery, who died 1996. Today Will Lord does good British flint gunflints and archaeological replicas. Sells a nice film showing gunflint making
2014 How To Make Gunflints, with Will Lord. MP4 file, for sale, privately produced, Will Lord Prehistoric Experiences webpage, Will Lord of the Stone Age

 

[GREENSWLDE]

Zonie, I wonder if the post From JBrandon is a Commercial advert from him or an associate as I was under the belief that Mr. Lord was no longer knapping gun flints. All his films end up pushing his commercial enterprises.. Don't want to offend but I spoke to and bought flints from both Bert and Tom in lots of 100 to my sample in the dimming past. I think I have enough to see me out providing there are enough Peasants left to shoot at if someone doesn't finds a cure for this bug and we haven't Forgotten how to mount a shot gun. NIL DESPERATO CARBARUNDEM. Rudyard, Please correct my Latin as it's been over70 yrs since I picked up my copy of Eatin for Today.. OLD DOG..

 

[LuVerne Schumann]

Don't hate me cause I live in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Literally tons of high quality flint (chert) lying on the ground, everywhere.

 

[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.

I make and use novaculite all the time for my flint lock rifles. Keep in mind that noviclulite works better if it is heat treated. You will have to do your own research on heat treating it. A kiln works very good.

 

[M. De Land]

Well, this post makes me want to get back outside and make some gun flints. I have a mess of them knapped in pistol size 5/8s in square but need to make up more 7/8s inch square for my new So. Mtn rifle. I like the heat treated Keokuk chert flakes left over from arrow point work.
Once the spawls are worked down I have found that indirect percussion is the way to go to get gun flints nice and flat. Course the edges are pressure flaked to finish.

 

[Gun Tramp]

Photos?

 

[flintsteel]

It is my understanding that the very best flint comes from quarries deep enough that it has not been exposed to eons of freezing and heating which results in microscopic cracks that show up when knapping or when the trigger is pulled it shatters. In the Texas Panhandle we have a high quality flint called Alibates. From time immemorial people have come here and quarried it from deep down and it has been found in implements for a thousand miles around. Great stuff!

 

[rich pierce]

Don't hate me cause I live in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Literally tons of high quality flint (chert) lying on the ground, everywhere.

I’d be happy to visit sometime and pay you inkind for some collecting.

 

[S.Kenton]

I live in west central Ohio. My experience with flint for my flintlocks has been of this; the smooth, glassy looking flint in any color, is the flint you want to try and make a gun flint out of. I have tried the chalky white lower quality flint and it just doesn’t spark as well. I’m always walking the bare fields for artifacts and regularly come across nice flakes.

 

[smo]

Don't hate me cause I live in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Literally tons of high quality flint (chert) lying on the ground, everywhere.

I’d be happy to visit sometime and pay you inkind for some collecting.

Rich , just do a drive by... We live on a gravel/ chert road, can’t keep tires on our rides because of cheap rubber and sharp rocks!

There’s a lot of road construction going on around the Clarksville area, unearthing some nice rocks!

 

[LuVerne Schumann]

Rich , just do a drive by... We live on a gravel/ chert road, can’t keep tires on our rides because of cheap rubber and sharp rocks!

There’s a lot of road construction going on around the Clarksville area, unearthing some nice rocks!

What he said.

My wife and I do lots of woods and creek walking, and chert nodules are everywhere.

 

[GREENSWLDE]

Flintsteel, This sounds a bit like our Grimes Graves in Norfolk. Shafts vertically down to the floor stone and then levels following it.Bad enough with electric light and steel tools as we can see them now but must have been a bit frightening with a tallow light and deer antler picks and hammers. Them wer tha days. AAAAh. OLD DOG

 

[JBrandon]

Zonie, I wonder if the post From JBrandon is a Commercial advert from him or an associate as I was under the belief that Mr. Lord was no longer knapping gun flints. All his films end up pushing his commercial enterprises..

Nope, not a commercial, just trying to provide some historical background and info to the community. Lord's film is a good way to see gunflints being made. There are also older historical ones on youtube if you look.
Track o W sells good British flints made by a Tom Fuller. They are made correctly by knapping long flakes (blades) into segments. If anyone knows who is producing the French flints from Track o W, I would like to know. They are also shaped correctly and good material, but no name is given.

But for practical shooting purposes, you don't need to have either fine British black flint, or correctly knapped gunflints. Anyone can learn to take a flake off a piece of flint and shape it roughly into a usable gunflint. As the posts here point out, lots of flint/chert materials will work. Hard flint, sharp edge, fits in the **** - all you need. And that's what even the military did in the early days of flintlocks before knapping industries got going in UK, France, and elsewhere in the later 1600s.

 

[smo]

The problem with most of the chert / flint in my area , according too my Friendly Flint expert.

Most that he found locally had been exposed too the elements and are rotten, so to speak.

However , he’s a knapper... for his use of making points and blades it’s hard to find a piece large enough for use.
He says by the time you take away everything that not an arrowhead... there’s nothing left.

As far as gun flints go, I’ve used some of the larger ( none arrowhead) pieces for flints in my gun.
After a little shaping with my Dremel, what I found was some shattered on first impact, others functioned well.

There are still some areas around with good rocks, but rock hounds have been wading these waters and crawling the hills for a long time now.

My Friend I mentioned once drove here 30 + years ago from Va., just to pick up flint...

 

[jbwilliams3]

Yeah, an old friend of mine from Tennessee had a huge supply of chert from his home state. He had it all around his workshop at his property here in VA as he knapped tons of arrowheads. I picked up pieces on a bunch of occasions, mostly for fire starting but experimented with some of the smaller sizes in my locks. I, too, found that some just shattered on the first or second shot while some lasted about as long as a poor quality English flint. The best flints I've ever used are Rich Pierce's white Missouri rocks that he used to sell. Those were equal to or better than the best English black or French amber flints I've used.

 

[RB POWELL]

Is there a season for "peasants?"

 

[smo]

Yeah, an old friend of mine from Tennessee had a huge supply of chert from his home state. He had it all around his workshop at his property here in VA as he knapped tons of arrowheads. I picked up pieces on a bunch of occasions, mostly for fire starting but experimented with some of the smaller sizes in my locks. I, too, found that some just shattered on the first or second shot while some lasted about as long as a poor quality English flint. The best flints I've ever used are Rich Pierce's white Missouri rocks that he used to sell. Those were equal to or better than the best English black or French amber flints I've used.

I totally agree!
Wished I’d stocked up, still have a few small ones.

 

[Tobie]

In Lawrence County and Giles County TN- we used to hunt "rocks" almost every weekend. It became apparent very quickly that you needed a stick to flip the exposed part of the arrowhead. My former brother-in-law collected enough really nice big heads to pay for his new truck. We hunted a big field in Bodenham that UT dug for a semester and still found a lot of really beautiful heads. Some older folks there believed that the rain made them. I had buckets full of broken parts- I'd give them to guys who had flinters.

 

[toot]

I live in NEW ENGLAND and we have no flint. so in the past in a pinch when the flint in the gun broke I have used a piece of white / clear / or rose quartz. it will sure through a good shower of sparks. when I was younger I would use quartz arrow heads that I would find id the potato fields around my area. now I am talking about the 50,s and 60,s a long time ago.