Making your own flints

[Robert Egler]

I have a problem with knapping my own flints. Once I get the flint core correctly shapped, I have no problem knocking off bifaces to make the gun flints, but I have a heck of a time trying to get the top of the core flat to start with, can't tell you how many good pieces of flint I've made a mess of trying. Anyone who makes their own flints have any suggestions?

 

Get ahold of Rich Pierce, he's a member, and makes and sells great Missouri flints. Send him a PT and I'm sure he'll have god advice for you

Bill

 

[Robert Egler]

thanks! :thumbsup:

 

[ameling]

Also, you do not need to have that "flat" top on every flint. Historically, there were two main shapes - the Wedge and the Platform. The Wedge shape was just that - a slanted top flint with no flat top. The Platform shape has that flat top.

Karl Koster wrote up a good article on his research of gun flints throughout the Great Lakes (northern) fur trade. They varied by country or origin and that "shape". As I recall, the Wedge version was the earlier style of flint (and easier to make), but both existed as long as flintlocks were used. (I'll have to find and re-read that article.)

Just my humble thoughts to share. Take them as such.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands


p.s. Rich Pierce also wrote a great article about making your own gun flints in the August/September 2007 issue of On The Trail magazine Vol. 14 No. 4. He also shows a drawing of knocking off that top to create the top flat/platform on a wedge shaped flint.

 

[chipper]

I've knapped quite alot of flint for knives and such. I would start with a nice piece that has a flat surface to start with, and then work around the flat survace to develop the rest of the piece. Another thing that helps me alot is to turn the piece sideways and chip sideways along the long axis of the piece. This works especially well when I'm trying to do a reduction.

I hope that makes sense. Knapping flint often doesn't. It simply breaks, and I spend the next min. or so going, Did I hold the piece too tight? Was my 50degree angle wrong? Did I use a follow stroke on my hit or was I leading. Did I remember to pull with my middle finger to help remove the flake? Did I grind with my grindstone in the right direction? . ect ect ect
I've almost quit knapping because it's so tiresome. I like beating on metal better. It does what it's told to do and if you mess up, you simply weld on another chunk and keep going.

Regards
Loyd Shindelbower
Loveland Colorado

 

[juancho]

I know exactly what youre saying.My way around that is to use very thick and heavy leather to hold them in place.Doing that I can use filnts as small as 5/16 sqr on my Pensyvania.Some times I make them completly square with 4 sharp sides, so I can rotate them 4 times.It worked for me so far.

 

[Robert Egler]

I appreciate all the advice.

There is a bit of a misunderstanding, though. I'm not talking about making the top of the gunflint flat. I'm starting several steps back from that. I'm talking about making the top of the very large raw flint nodule that you are going to make gunflints from flat. The large peice of flint that results is flat on the top and has the white outer layer removed and is called a core.

After you get the top of the core flat, you knap thin long sections off the sides, which have a ridge running down the middle (if you're good). Then you take these sections and notch them at the right width of a gunflint, and then break the actual gunflint off the section. THEN you worry about whether the gunflint itself is reasonably flat.

My problem is getting the top of the core flat enough to start with.

I've located a somewhat nearby (6 hours round trip driving, 2 1/2 hours round trip hike) source of raw flint and picked up about 120 pounds earlier this week. I'm going to get this to work if it kills me! :cursing: At this point I actually don't need any more gunflints, but I am determined to learn how to do to this.

Sorry I wasn't clear in what I was asking! :surrender:

 

[Robert Egler]

I hope that makes sense. Knapping flint often doesn't. It simply breaks, and I spend the next min. or so going, Did I hold the piece too tight? Was my 50degree angle wrong? Did I use a follow stroke on my hit or was I leading. Did I remember to pull with my middle finger to help remove the flake? Did I grind with my grindstone in the right direction? . ect ect ect
I've almost quit knapping because it's so tiresome.

Regards
Loyd Shindelbower
Loveland Colorado

Thanks! :hatsoff: It is reasuring to know that I'm not the only one who has difficulty getting the flint to do what I thought it should do. Sometimes it's tempting to just smash the damn thing with a sledge hammer and pick out whatever peices are about the right size. :haha:

 

[ameling]

Aaaah ... forming that initial ... core.

Yeah, that's almost as hard as some of the other steps. Especially since everything else starts with it.

All the books and videos tell you to strike that hard glancing blow on the big chunk of flint - to knap off the end to get that "flat top". Yeah, easier said than done. It takes a lot of FORCE to do that, and the correct angle. Otherwise your "gravel pile" gets larger - fast.

The only real advice I could give would be to pay attention to the angle of the blow. Remember how the fracture line wants to "cone" out from the impact sight. So the direction of your initial blow will need to be at a 45 degree angle from the angle you want it to split along. Yeah, easier said than done.

The rest is just practice and experience. And a fast growing gravel pile!

Hope this helps.

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

p.s Don't dump your flint "gravel" anywhere near where you might be driving a vehicle. A friend had a barrel full of chards dumped right at the edge of his driveway in his yard. (His buddy wanted the steel barrel really bad!) Over the next couple years, he sliced holes in two car tires and a rear tractor tire! And that's all AFTER he cleaned the pile up - but not quite good enough!

 

[Eric Krewson]

I have made a number of gun flints out of local material. Some have sparked really well, others made out of substandard chert were poor sparkers. One thing I learned, they don't have to be perfectly made to work perfectly. Even a crudely made flint out of the right material throws a shower of sparks.

 

[mccoy]

I'm not a knapper either, but I bought a box of flint nodules on Ebay this summer to make my own gun flints. After hours of foolong around trying to teach myself how to do it right, I got out the big hammer and beat up one of the nodules pretty good. I ended up with several useable gun flints, and they throw a great shower of sparks. They seem to last longer than most black english I've used in the same guns. I just used the same theory I use when building guns...if at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer. If that doesn't work, quit before you make a fool of yourself.

 

[Sparks Stone]

Ya'll, this is getting a bit abstract for us 'visual' types! Some images sure would help! Please.

Sparks

 

[chipper]

try here, this has more info than most books...[url] http://www.onagocag.com/knapping.html[/url]

Regards
Loyd

 

[Rod Lassey]

Mike--your post gave me a good chuckle. Over in the central part of ND, where the well known Knife River flint comes from, the farmers absolutely HATE the stuff. Nothing worse than the sinking feeling (pun intended) you get while watching a $2000 tractor tire going flat.

By the way, the book "Indian Trade Guns" edited by T. M. Hamilton has quite a bit of information on historical flint knapping, and French vs. English flints. Basically, the French pioneered the platform flint technique, while the English used the earlier spall variety, until the English were able to spirit the secret out of France.

Rod

 

[gacitizen]

Wow!

That's the most info I've ever seen in one place on knapping flint :shocked2:

Thanks for the link.