alternate material for flint in flintock

[Robert Egler]

Greetings! New here.

I was wondering about using material other than flint in a flintlock. I routinely use quartz when I use "flint" and steel to start a campfire, mainly because I have to buy flint, and there's quartz everywhere around my house. Not just every piece of quartz will work, you have to look for the right pieces, but the best quartz seems to spark as well as the average flint. Has anyone ever tried using quartz in a flintlock?

 

[twobirds]

Hi Squirrel Tail...

Flint is a cryptocrystalline form of quartz, as is chert, jasper, agate, and a number of other variations. Same basic chemical makeup (silicon dioxide) with the same hardness, so I'm not too suprised that it works well for you. I routinely use petrified wood, secured locally, for the same purposes.
I know that some quartz tends to shatter under pressure, rather than than flake like flint...so you are quite correct that you've got to try different pieces.

Maybe Rich Pierce will chime in, as this topic is one of his many specialties.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[rich pierce]

That putrified wood works fine if you can stand the smell! :rotf:

Lots of minerals can work- one question is whether they can be readily fashioned into gunflints and the other is whether the hardness is appropriate. Obsidian, from what I understand, will not spark, nor will glass but both knap fine (just reiterating what i have heard). Being able to secure an abundant supply of high quality rock is important as well.

English flint is plain easy to work, very predictable, available in high quality at such low prices that it was sometimes used as ships' ballast. That's why it dominated the market- not because of functional superiority. I have found other types of flint/chert to spark just as well, though they are often harder to knap.

 

[George Holton]

If bad goes to worse ,you can take a blocj of hard wood ,drill 4 holes in it and glue in lighter flints.

 

[mckutzy]

well actualy we have ben having dificuly lighting those flints in a wheellock and i would doubt it works well if at all to strike a spark to light the pan. see the preflintlock forum on what a few other have been discussing about the simular topics.

 

[Leonredbeard]

Hey, ReallyoldBob,
Back in the '70's, yeah the 1970's, I bought a striker set up for my first flinter. You had to glue a strip of suede leather to the steel. Then you put this piece of clear plastic in the jaws of the cock. The clear plastic had a piece of lighter 'flint' in it and the front end had a wheel like a lighter has. I never really got it to work, I was too stubborn to glue the leather on my precious steel. It sure didn't work trying to spin the wheel down over the smooth hard steel.
As stated above, my and others' experiements with the lighter flints in the wheellocks doesn't give me any real hope that the afore mentioned set up would work in a flinter either.
volatpluvia

 

[tg]

Obsidian will work in a pinch but you have to have just the right shaped piece and will probably not get more than a couple of sparks before it breaks up...not a real good choice

 

[Runner]

Anything harder than steel that will break to an edge sharp enough and tough enough to gouge off little pieces of steel from the hardened frizzen will work. Some things that you can't break to good enough edges or are too precious for the normal knapping process can be ground to a fine enough edge and work fine. Garnet works very well and the new chips leave a sharp edge behind for the next shot. Sapphire works as well but is supposed to eat frizzens.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Not PC but I use sawed agate. I pick up sawed scrap agate pieces for a pittance at rock and gem shows, then resaw it into usable substitutes for flint. It lasts and sparks very well, but such as the brilliant and gaudily colored Brazilian agate definitely says not PC.

 

Obsidian will work in a pinch but you have to have just the right shaped piece and will probably not get more than a couple of sparks before it breaks up...not a real good choice

tg and runner: Have you tried obsidian? The Hardness of obsidian (which is volcanic glass, and in most regions alot rarer than flint/chert) is less than or at most equal to steel--typically less than the hardness of a hard frizzen. I guess because it will take a very sharp edge, it might cut into steel a little--but it is brittle and too soft to be a good "flint". The flint's job is to cut off tiny fragments of steel, heated by the friction of the strike--so that they fall into the pan and set off the powder...True, alot of materials harder than steel will do the job. But the various quartz family members (H=7) such as chert[flint, novaculite], agate, jasper, etc. work well and have for centuries. Use of very hard or very abrasive [grainy] materials will shorten frizzen life. Corundum [sapphire and ruby]certainly is hard enough (H=9) but is harder to get and shape. What is wrong with good ol'chert[flint]? Y'all having trouble getting it? SiO2 is the most common mineral family on earth.

 

[oldarmy]

black Arkansas works well also.
It's a form of almost pure silacate. Hard and dense..
The "REAL TRANSULANT WHITE" works too... but it's hard to find outside of hotsprings Ark.
Makes good arrow heads and knife blades...
check out Norton CO's old quarries and say hello to QUARRY MEN FOR ME :grin:

 

black Arkansas works well also.
It's a form of almost pure silacate. Hard and dense..
The "REAL TRANSULANT WHITE" works too... but it's hard to find outside of hotsprings Ark.
Makes good arrow heads and knife blades...
check out Norton CO's old quarries and say hello to QUARRY MEN FOR ME :grin:

True, the black hard arkansas and translucent white arkansas stones are grades of novaculite--a form of bedded chert that occurs in huge amounts in Arkansas' Ouachita Mts and in parts of the old world too [where it is called Turkey oil stone]. They would make fine gunflints [whereas the soft ark and washita stones are grainier and more agressive cutters]--BUT, these grades of novaculite are becoming rare and expensive. It is alot cheaper to use chert/flint from other sources. If you have access to the outcrops or abandoned quarries [some of which are off limits] then you can collect some of this grade in small chunks...alot of it is fractured and would be hard to knap into gunflint, but possible. I live close enough to collect the stuff, but I buy my flints from English knappers...

 

[Runner]

I use pertrified wood found on a Mississippi sandbar right now. There is also a carnelian type of agate that is always too twisted and fractured for most uses found on the sandbars. Sliced on a saw, it makes great gunflints. Obsidian will cause sparks most of the time, but every strike destroys the edge completely. The very best I have seen is a dark Bloodstone that had about the same toughness rating as California Jade. It lasted until it got too short and produced sparks even when it was dull. Unfortunately, that material is way too expensive for gunflint use.
The clear agate off the top of the southwest Fire Agate is also very tough.
I use agate. garnet, and such materials because I am a lapidary Mike. I only have to walk to the garage to make more out of scraps and oddball pieces that are not good for cutting nice stones out of. I have some good garnet that is solid but too dark to make a pleasing stone. Every strike causes the edge to chip back a little, but the edge stays sharp. Agate is supposed to be a seven and garnet is an 8. I had some garnet arrow heads knapped out of the same garnet that sold as soon as I showed them. I used most of the big pieces on those. Every now and then I run onto another big piece and do something with it. The last one became a gun flint!

 

...a lapidary...that explains alot. I did a little lapidary stuff when I was in High School [I am a lifelong rockhound; been a geologist since the 1960s]. I am sure there are numerous minerals/rocks that would work, but good ol' chert/flint has been the best compromise in commoness, hardness, toughness and "shapability".

 

[Runner]

I agree, and I would go as far as to say that the better chert "flints" are the best there are for producing sparks without dressing the edge. Not as hot as some flints but the same on the tenth shot as it was on the first. Up here, material is hard to find. The winter cracks what is exposed pretty quickly. I have some now that are made out of Jefferson County chert that are not cracked or flawed. It is actually easier to go walk the river banks around here and pick up what some call "Snotty Agates", than it is to find good solid fresh chert!. The best material close by would be Union Road agate, but if you find pieces big enough, it makes stunning stones. If you had a good specimen, you would be nuts to cut it. Remember the orange and white cracked but solid petrified wood? I just cut it and let the cracks do the sides of the pieces. The stuff was almost free if you would go pick it up years back.
I had a pretty good wire wrap trade going on selling my own stones mostly and I had several opal customers that would still like for me to be cutting. Got tired of staring at the trays of cut stuff that cost less per carat than I was paying for rough stone. I only cut for one person now, and she is due a fine stone shortly!
Nice talking to you!

 

[tg]

"tg and runner: Have you tried obsidian?"

Yes, I have taken a few shots with it. I used to make arrow heads and blades out of it and had a lot of it around so I thought I would try it,it is very easy to shape compared to flint IMHO, as stated it will throw a spark but not very strong ones and not for more than a time or maybe two,you need a sharp edge yet enough thickness to help prevent breakage, it would be a last resort if stranded with a flintlock and out of good flints.

 

"tg and runner: Have you tried obsidian?"

Yes, I have taken a few shots with it. I used to make arrow heads and blades out of it and had a lot of it around so I thought I would try it,it is very easy to shape compared to flint IMHO, as stated it will throw a spark but not very strong ones and not for more than a time or maybe two,you need a sharp edge yet enough thickness to help prevent breakage, it would be a last resort if stranded with a flintlock and out of good flints.

Interesting. Obsidian does take a very sharp edge and makes great flesh-cutting knife blades--too bad it is so fragile. I read of an experiment in archeology a while back where a prof asked some Apache hunters to use obsidian and flint blades to dress out bear instead of their steel blades. Reportedly the Apaches loved the stone blades and wanted to keep them...

 

[Runner]

I decided to learn to knap. I went out and got some one inch thick slices of obsidian with a pink/purple shimmer in it. I hauled off and struck the piece to knock off a piece to work with. After I got the bleeding stopped, I decided I would leave the obsidian to someone else! Those little shards will go right thru leather work gloves!

 

[tg]

It is sharp, a box of bandaids was part of my gear when knapping, I skinned a beaver with a medium sized flake once, I think a flake is better than the serrated blade type for this, it works very well and will hold up pretty good if you just jet the edge do the work and do not try to pry or twist, most of the longer 5"6" blades I tried to made went well untill I decided to take "one more flake"off then they broke, it is quite an art and I take my hat off to those who have mastered it.

 

[dlemaster]

I've read that obsedian is microscopicly sharper that the metal scalpels used by surgeons.

Regards, Dave