Poll: My favorite gunflint is . . .

[Ohio Rusty]

I really don't have a favorite. I live about 30 miles south of flint ridge, and once a year head up there and pick up bags of flint ridge flint chunks. I brought back about 30 nodules of pedernales flint from texas I found there on vacation. I wish I had a huge truck with me, as there were literally thousands of nodules, but I only could bring back what I could carry on the passenger side of the floorboard. I have used onandaga, it's hard to knap but it does well. I also have tried some Zaleski black from southern Ohio. Great flint to work and lasts a long time, but it's very hard to get. I've had good success with Flint Ridge flint. Some don't last as long as others, but that is no big deal as I have alot of nodules and spalls in the garage. I prefer a flint that after it's knapped, the light can shine thru. These slightly opaque flints have in the past given me the best life and sparking quality. I once found a piece of milky quartz and for the heck of it knapped a rifle flint in the field. I killed 3 squirrels and a rabbit with that flint. I've taught myself to knap gunflints using just hammerstones and an antler tine in case of a 'field emergency' and I have to make one from some chert or flint I've come across. English flint is probably the best to have, but with the prices of finished english gunflints going up and up, I haven't bought a flint in a long time. It's cheaper for me to knap my own, and there is a greater satisfaction in shooting a bullseye, or making meat with gunflints you made yourself.
Ohio Rusty

 

[brushbuster]

i tried my hand at knapping arrow heads a few years ago just to see if i could do it.
the feller what showed me the basics made his tools from antlers .
one for these tools was a 6" deer tine with a notch cut in a triangle about 3/8" wide at the top .this worked extremely well for putting the final edge an the arrow head . :yakyak: my questin is would such a tool work on gun flints :hmm: :hmm:


sorry didn't see rustys post but doesn't that seem more p.c.?

 

[madstone]

Growing up in the "back-country" of Ky Appalachia I have lots of flint "pieces" of arrowheads. The good ones make great, but shortlived, flints. Good locks will shoot anything, though, it seems? Hardness of frizzen and angle of impact? :results: