Where to find flints in the wild?

[TANSTAAFL]

I worked in Wamsutter (we lived in Rawlins) for six years, I was not overly bitter when company transfered me.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Nice looking rock, one can tell it is hard just by looking.

Bye the bye, is that a little lollipop peep at front of tang? If so, it is a neat looking affair.

 

Certain regions simply do not have any "flint" (chert), although it is a pretty common mineral/rock. In some regions it occurs in the original beds it was deposited in--typically either in limestones or as bedded chert, per se. In other regions it is found as pebbles or cobbles transported in by rivers or glaciers. In areas where there are volcanic rocks (chiefly in the western US) agates, jasper and other siliceous minerals which can be used as "flints" can be found. If you live in the midcontinent where Paleozoic limestones crop out, chert is fairly common. In Arkansas there is a 1000' thick series of chert called the Arkansas Novaculite which has been used for centuries by natives and later colonizers. If you live in the coastal plain, chert is rarer and usually transported in as river gravel. If you live on the Piedmont chert is rare also, bedrock being largely metamorphic rocks. The US does not have the immense chalk deposits like England which hosts the black cherts we love so much...

 

[Deadeye]

What you see there is just a screw that filling the hole where the lollipop goes.

 

[tree]

Alibates National Monument just north of Amarillo, Texas encloses a large flint bearing formation that
was mined for Flint by Native Americans for over a
thousand years --both for their own use and for trade over much of North America. I'm sure they
must have used it in gun flints prior to the
percussion caps and cartridge era.

 

Alibates National Monument just north of Amarillo, Texas encloses a large flint bearing formation that
was mined for Flint by Native Americans for over a
thousand years --both for their own use and for trade over much of North America. I'm sure they
must have used it in gun flints prior to the
percussion caps and cartridge era.

Whereas I am sure that many Native Americans could make their own gunflints, it seems from the old records that most were traded or gifted to them by the whatever European power was in their region. At some point, many forgot how to make flint tools and points (and presumably gunflints), all being replaced by metal tools, points and imported gunflints. Flintlocks were traded in large numbers to the 'Indians' by the 17th century and numerous Dutch, English and French guns were introduced along with barrels of powder, lead and gunflints. Through time, trade lists show that powder, lead AND gunflints were being re-supplied, suggesting that the 'Indians' were not chipping many of their own. Most of the flint tools and points we find today at old camps, etc. predate the main European contacts...

 

[Joel/Calgary]

That being said. I have read that you can upgrade a chert stone by burying it in the dirt under a fire pit for a few days. The slow heat makes it more suitable for use in knapping arrow heads (sort of like a poorman's flint) so I imagine that it would work better in a flintlock. I haven't tried it, but it might be worth it.

Couple of things. Heat treating makes for poor gunflints for the same reason it makes for easier knapping - it makes the rock break easier. I've read that gunflints made of heat-treated rock only last a few shots at most. FYI, heat treatment, either paleo or modern, is actually a subtle technolgy, and the rate of heating and cooling, the maximum temperature, and the hold time, or whether to heat-treat at all, are very dependant on the rock you're woking with. Over-do it and you ruin the rock completely. The ancients could apparently get quite sophisticated with the bury-it-inder-the-fire-pit technique.

On another matter, our part of the Rockies has plenty of carbonates, but no major bedded flint or chert that I know of, and the local silicious rock I've tried all has incipient or expressed stress fractures left over from the mountain building and doesn't knap worth a d@mn.

Joel

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Edwin wrote of the expedition laying over to make gun flints at a site in what would now be eastern Colorado/western Kansas. Said the site had long been used by Indians and later by Whites.

Three volumes, makes for a long read but very informative as to the geology and terrain of country they traversed.

Author: James, Edwin, 1797-1861
Title: Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819, 1820

[url] http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-144/index.asp[/url]

 

[Joel Lehman]

I saw a vein of flint about 8 inches thick in Inner Space Cavern in Georgetown, just north of Austin TX.
This is the cave where Bill Engvall of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour once worked as a tour guide. There is plenty of flint or chert of all qualities in central Texas.