doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Off Topic - Flint Arrows

Here is a pic of a few tools. The mano&matate is paleo, and I made the knife and hoe:



another knife & points

Bravo, Geo. Well done. Beautiful craftsmanship.

The last two in the closeup with the knife ............. I have a large point I found that was made from the same rock!! Colors are exactly the same!!

Thanks for going to the effort to post them. I appreciate it.

SRH

That was flint from the city dump in Dothan, Alabama...Geo

Kemo Sabe, is the lower left point a Bull-tongue Simpson?? Did you "fire" the chert first? Beautiful work. Gil

Yup and Yup. I ain't man enough to knap raw flint...Geo

Beautiful work George. What you guys can do with a "rock" is simply amazing!!

I heat treat our local raw flint (chert) in order to bring out color and to make the texture more glass like for knapping. A friend has a kiln for that purpose, but it can also be done in the aboriginal manner by digging out the sand in your fire pit and laying down the flint. Then cover the flint about two inches with sand and build your camp fire. One treatment with a good fire usually brings out the red color range from the iron naturally occurring in the rock.

I once asked my friend to heat a head size piece of agatized coral I had gotten out of the Withlacoochee river. Unfortunately the rock was not solid and had a hidden geode which must have been full of water. When he heated it the geode exploded and destroyed the kiln.

Thanks to all for the kind words..Geo

Anybody know if obsidian was ever heat-treated by users? We have lots of chert tools around here (SoCal) but volcanic glass was the prestige material and a valuable trade item here in the south where it wasn't a common natural occurrance. The prehistoric obsidian mines here are pretty well played out. Up north, not so much (Glass Mountain, Black Butte, etc.)

Mike, there's no need to heat treat obsidian or dacite. It is already glass. You could say the volcano that created it took care of the heat treating...Geo

I must say that I have enjoyed this interesting, if off topic thread. I have several arrow points I have found over the years, and a friend has quite a collection because he makes a concerted effort to walk local fields in the spring after a rain, when the farmers plow their land. My attempts to knap flint have been confined to trying to make flints for my flintlocks.

I did notice that Last Dollar was here this morning, but he did not do any whining about this particular off-topic thread. I'll bet he'd have complained several times by now if the Indians who left these artifacts were anti-gun Democrats. I know we're not supposed to notice the obvious. He's pretending to IGNORE me, so I don't have to worry about offending him.

Nice work Geo. Thanks for sharing it with us.