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I Forge Iron

Knapping


Frosty

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You DO know you're just over the hill from Hwy. 395 and seriously intense obsidian country. Yes? I used to collect obsidian from up by Sweet Water for the "Davis creek mahogany" obsidian  and north to Glass Buttes Oregon. Knapping flint, chert, etc. is okay but good obsidian is spectacular. There is flame and fire obsidian on the Glass Buttes and there are beds of pale green clear near Burns Or.

Knapping is zen-like skill, very meditative in nature. Blacksmithing is meditative as well same path different footprints.

Frosty The Lucky.

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LOL yes, I do.  He has told me about Davis Creek and Glass Buttes, the obsidian he's collected nearer (I know he's found some in Napa and up near Clear Lake, don't know where else) he says is low quality.  He buys and trades material with knappers all over the US.  Here is a piece he made this week out of Knife River Chalcedony.

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Oooh NICE piece! Napa Valley is too far south, the beds are really weathered out. There are two high quality sites up Davis Creek way old Indian quarries. Both digs are benched so you can sit on the beds and knap. I imagined sitting with other knappers while I worked. The way material was dug, pried, etc. and how the waste fell made it pretty clear they worked as groups. I tried to figure out who was the best knapper by the waste and quality of the dig. 

Once you  know what to look for Indian sites are easy enough to see, they knapped on the spot, some made cores to transport some made finished tools. I had better luck with obsidian from other places but I must've spent more time exploring and collecting from the Davis Creek area. I still have a bunch of Davis Creek mahogany obsidian needles, I've just never figured out how to make anything cool with them. Still, you never know. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Knife River is tough stuff so he did well with that one.  I do and have quarried my own flint here in NY and it's a ton of work but free flint is worth it.  It involved scaling creek beds and hauling buckets of flint to your vehicle crossing a creek.  It's back breaking work, so when I go to a scrap yard and steel is all in piles for the picking I'm just thrilled.  Quarrying flint is an all day affair with me swinging an 6 or 8 pound solid copper billet countless times to break open the flint and get it into transportable sizes.  Here's some of my beauties that are in a museum here in the east.carclovis.thumb.jpg.c41cf7e74c5c116c0ef9c4ba80598b99.jpg

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Nice points MC! That longitudinal flake has been my bane, obsidian is kind of fragile and flint is hard to come by here. Most native stone blades were ground and  polished, otherwise they liked ivory.

Frosty The Lucky.

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My grandmother up in Clarendon was a collector of Alibates, so I have some nice pieces. I have not knapped any of that yet (I am no knapper). 

Seems to be pretty tough. How does Alibates compare to other materials for workability? Some VERY nice work, by the way.

Robert Taylor

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Edited by Anachronist58
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On 6/11/2018 at 11:29 AM, ThomasPowers said:

As I recall jade was a mineral used up there at times for ground tools...

Yes but not very often and usually for ceremonial and jewelry, it's just too hard to work for every day tools. 

Robert: I don't see a good fracture plane in that sample of Alibates but we're only looking at two fractures.  There are tricks to selecting good knapping stone and that's break a piece and evaluate the fracture, long flat ripples with minimum curvature is primo. That's not what you're looking for for all tools though so your sample may be ideal. 

It's a fun craft, I should dig out a piece and see if I still remember how. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Frosty, I inherited three large pieces of this, the first piece pictured will probably remain intact. So, limited supply. As to fracture, there will be flat and curved pieces depending upon the level of Flint Whisperer that one has attained to. The copper faced hammer made short work of it this morning.

Pictured below are the two pieces that I intend to make samples available for fun, to any Knappers who have thus far chipped in on this thread. I am no Flake, so this is a sincere offer of workable samples off the Old Block.

As I mentioned to someone recently, I have knapped, but I am no Knapper. I do knap every day before my second shift engagement.

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A friend sent my Dad a big chunk of flint from Texas when Dad tried knapping. I took it to school and slabbed it on the rock saw we had. It got it down to working size quickly. The flint we have is a basic gray color, and very solid. Next time I am up at the folks estate I need to look for it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Knapping is one of those skills that is measured in literal tonnage -- because it takes access to tons of raw material to get even remotely good at it.

If you're interested in the scientific ramifications of knapping and just how deep the rabbit hole can get, I highly highly highly recommend a book called "Making Silent Stones Speak" by Toth and Schick.  Really amazing stuff to think about.

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Years ago, when I was doing primitive skills more regularly, I tried to get decent at knapping, but the stone around my corner of SC is decidedly lacking.  Rare at the best of times, and usually plenty well frost-fractured if you do manage to find it.

One thing that I always thought was weird was how the stone could be made a lot better just by cooking it.  You'd think that stone was stone and putting it in the fire wouldn't make any difference, but there it is.  No idea what's going on, but I know a lot of knappers who prefer to slab off large pieces and cook them before going any further.

If I lived nearer a good source of stone, I'd love to get back into the groove.  Last go I had at it, I was still able to knock out a functional hand axe if the stone cooperated with me.

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