knapping flints?

[Mr. 16 gauge]

Can anyone give me a good source (preferably with pics or photos) on how to knap flints in order to maintain a good shower of sparks into the pan? I'm relatively new to flintlocks and I'm only getting 10-15 shots per flint. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Gil Martin]

I have considered knapping flints and never got very far. You should be getting better performance out of flints. Only getting 10-15 shots is dismal. I use Old English or German knapped flints and they last a year or more. If you are using cut lints, the may not be able to be knapped.

Give me your address in a PM and I will send a few of the flints I use. All the best...
Gil

[Adam Helmer]

Mr. 16 gauge,

EXCELLENT post! Once you learn the secret of knapping, please post it here. I have tried for far too many years to knapp a sharp point on my DULL flints. Ok, I am not skilled in many things, but I want to know how to recycle my dull flints. LET'S go for it!

If you are only getting 10 to 15 shots per flint, have you polished your frizzen? A ROUGH frizzen "eats" flints because it is so rough and fragments them. I use a fine grade crocus cloth to polish my frizzens. I give the frizzen 30 or so "laps" of crocus cloth to remove the "dings" from the face of the frizzen and get longer flint "life."

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all the other fine folks on this Forum.

Adam

[Mad_Jack]

Another flintlockers tool. I made a simple, small knapping tool.
SUPPLIES NEEDED: A 2 inch length of 1/4" OD copper tubing, and an antler tine.
TO MAKE; Tap one end together until the opposite sides touch. Use a punch to put a dent on the center of the flat edge. Fold it over until the opposite edges touch forming a small "V" shape where the open ends of the "V" touch. Drill a hole in the tine to accept the copper tube rounded end. Put it into the tine using epoxy or some adhesive.
TO USE IT: Press the center of the "V", applying pressure, against the front of your flint. Push in and twist down quickly. This causes small chipping flakes. Walk it across the front of the flint doing this.
After sharpening, shoot away!

[steven gordon]

I went as far as getting a couple of nodules of English flint I haven't used. I also got the book, Flint Knapping, which told me all I needed to know about flint knapping. It seems that flint knapping is a lot like a lot of other things: a small amount of experience will do a lot and a lot of experiece is needed for mastery.

I tried knapping the english flint and it knaps well and easily.

So after I thought about the English Flint, I thought about Obsidian, and then I thought about bottle glass.

Actually, Pyrex works pretty darn well; it's easy to pressure flake and it's pretty predictable when you shape it. The problem is that when you take an itty bitty piece out of your wife's baking dish she gets pissed off.

There are a lot of materials that will spall, that is, make chips when pressed, leaving a sharp edge. The easier they spall, the easier they are to work, but the less durable they are when striking against a frizzen.

So then I started to think about chert, which is coarser, then I naturally thought about quartz (can you tell I took some geology courses?) then I thought about asking some rock hound friends of mine to cut me some pieces of quartz, but I didn't get that far.

I have a friend who's a ceramics engineer, and before I could start whacking away at the various ceramics in my house, we figured out the proper material could be made pretty cheaply.

Before I could get it on the market, Elk K enterprises came out with their DuraFlint. It's a good product and it sparks well.

But it's not flint. And, after all, if we were after innovation, we wouldn't be on the web site.

Which brings us back to your question.

Get a book on flint knapping, try Amazon.com. When you practice, start with stuff that's easy to come by and won't hurt to throw away, like glass. It'll take you a while to get the right shape of quartz, and it'll be miserable to pressure flake, but it'll probably last quite a while.

And a deer antler tine will work OK for pressure flaking without the copper tubing. Can I recommend holding the set up in a piece of deerskin against your palm?

But the copper works better.

[roundball]

When I first started in Flintlocks, this whole issue of "knapping" was intimidating just because of it's name...a word I knew nothing about and immediately assumed it was some sort of mythical skill that only the most astute could learn in a lifetime.

Well, as it turns out, IMO, knapping a gun flint is the simpliest thing in the world...childs play really...the problem is since we don't know what in the heck is meant by the term 'knapping', we can't even begin to fathom how to do it and subsequently we build it up in our minds that it must be some big special deal...but once you see it or figure it out, you'll be red-faced like I was it's so simple: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Any / all knapping I have to do is always at the range, or in the garage before leaving for a day's hunt as follows:

At the range I just use the stainless shaft on my short starter every 12-15 shots, or better yet, just flip the flint over in the jaws and they tend to 'self-knapp' themselves that way;

In the garage I use a 6" brass rod the size of a wooden pencil;

If I ever have to knapp a flint while hunting...and so far I never have...I'll just use the back edge of my belt knife.

The way I knapp is to just make 4-5 very light little "tap-tap-tap-tap-taps" down across the edge and it's good to go...very light little pecks really...just need to cause tiny scallop shaped flakes of flint to flake off the UNDERSIDE of the flint's edge...only takes 10-15 seconds.