Need some Texas assistance or Washington/ Oregon
 

I'm getting all Paleolithic lately and would like to try my hand at knapping some arrow heads. Apparently, Flint is a good stone for this as is Obsidian. I'm told that aside from our illustrious pseudo-Amish dwellar, there is a lot of Flint in Texas and a lot of Obsidian in Oregon, Washington, and California.

I'm assuming it's all over the ground or maybe even it is the ground.

Despite my still being about 4 years behind in mailing some of you your photos I am swallowing my embarrassment and asking Dwellars who can or will send me some chunks of Flint or Obsidian. The stone, not the dwellar.

I could send you granite, marble, slate, or shale in return or I could refund your postage costs.

Lemme ask my brother. Though Ohio isn't a Flint or Obsidian mecca, my brother probably can gitsum, 'cause of his yob.

Obsidian is really cool. I found a hunk of it on a trip out West. You can totally see how it would make a nice arrowhead. I'd send it to you but haven't seen it in 30 years.

Earth's Children reenactor?

Hmm. There's not a lot around here that I know of. At least not any that's not still stuck to the ground. Mostly limestone. Maybe there's more up in the Metroplex by (the dwellar) Flint?

Ft3, I'll find some Oregon obsidian for you... PM your addresss and how much.

Oregon has reds and blacks, but the reds are sort of rare.

My brother said "can do, let's talk later."

I'll let you know more as I find out.

Flint is damn near everywhere.

Be careful when working with obsidian, when flaked, it can be sharper than a scalpel.

QFT.

This is a fact. I've been cut before by flint and I reckon the obsidian is even sharper still. For Fuck's Sake, mind your eye protection. Your hands will heal, but one of these "flinters" might just go right through and stick on the inside of your skull.

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Knapping, I've do a little. Mostly to form the flints for my flint and steel firemaking kit work. I have a big hunk of flint downstairs, how much are you thinking about starting with?

I think obsidian is essentially dirty glass.

I started poking around the web to see about upstate NY flint, because the Iroquois had to get theirs somewhere. So I ended up looking at South Waverly PA which has an archeological site called Spanish Hill, which may or may not bear some comparison with mound builder sites further South, naturally from their I started reading about the Forbidden Path and French Jesuit reports, which got me thinking about a French cemetery which shows up on old maps up the road a piece.... Ritalin, its a possibility.

I so hear you, brother magpie. The internet is an ocean of shiny things.

What in the holy hell have you guys done to my vanity search.

Dude, my brother has been spending all his time at the compound and I still haven't seen him or heard back from him. :(

It might not happen until T-giving, so I do hope others can get you started in the meantime.

No worries, I still have lots of time.

at my old farm i found tons of arrowheads. while the majority of them were flint some were a white soft rock. i'm no geologist. couldn't tell ya what it was made from. good luck! i couldn't do something like that. not unless i was like i dunno. locked up with lots of time on my hands? :lol2: seriously, cool beans on trying this task dude!

We're rocking it!

Flint stones. Meet the Flint stones. Have a yabba dabba do dah time.

And the time that will be had shall be said forevermore and henceforth to have been a gay old time.

I saw a show that said they actually make scalpels out of it. It can be honed to one molecule on the edge.

jimhelm, if you will excuse me, "honed" is not the right term though you use it in context. A metal blade can be honed, that is sharpened on a stone or strop to keen edge. Obsidian blades for scalpels are not "sharpened" this way. They're produced by knapping, knocking flakes from a larger piece. The flakes produced are the finished product for scalpel blades, at least as far as the edge processing is concerned. Obsidian is much like glass, and the edge of a broken piece of glass is already as sharp as it's going to get, it can't be honed sharper than a clean fracture.

interesting link I found that made me think of Perry Winkle:
http://www.theperfectedge.com/howto.shtml


and one for footfootfoot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Crabtree

It's important because that is thought to be the first human technology, and teaching it across generations may have been the "booting" of human civilization.

I know what they said when they discovered that technology,too. It wasn't Eureka! It was "MOTHERFUCKER! That shit is sharp. Goddamnit!

Later that week it was "Hold my Monkey Skull, watch this..."

Foot: You got your flint or obsidian yet?

I order most of mine online. Plenty of knapping supplies on ebay. Novaculite is easy to get. Be sure to wear a mask or at list work outside due to the silica dust. Beer bottle bottoms are a practice meduim.

Do you have a good supply of pitch and snew?i

I have plenty of pitch and sinew and now that deer season is hot underway I could get as much sinew as I could ever use.

Beer bottle bottoms? I'll have to check that out.

Still waiting on flint and obsidian, but I have a line on some...

Wait wait wait wait wait...

You want to make stone tools.

You start by ordering online.

Wow. Just #$%^ing wow.

Foot, my brother has been spending his weekends down at the "compound" and I haven't seen him.

However, he can't avoid me at Thanksgiving, as dinner is at his house. Funny, though, mom said they were told to be there around 1 and they told me around 5.

I'm kidding.

I haven't forgotten you!

What is this about with your brother and the compound???

My brother and his wife bought some land, in southern hilly Ohio, with two houses on it. (One house fixing up very nicely the other a lost cause.) We called it 'the compound' for a while but now it has a better name.

But I don't want to put the name, in case they do a vanity search. ;)

But it's a funny one!

Biggerhead?

Nope.

How can I write it so it's ungooglable?

D*O*E*S T*H*I*S R*E*A*L*L*Y W*O*R*K?

charades?

three words

first word, first syllable

sounds like ... seizure?

charley horse?

I don't want to play anymore.

I don't know where BigV is getting his hints but he's way off, so don't go by him, lamp. Funner-poker-atter.

Anyway, the name is clever, and funny. (No, it's not Clever & Funny Ranch, dumbass.)

And forget I brought it up. Probably someone will tell me I'm wrong anyway. :lol:

It's only going to get worse. You need to come clean to put a stop to the speculation. Have you learned nothing from all the scandals in the news you have witnessed?

You can't come clean too soon.

If your family are anything like you, I'd be afraid to guess. Afraid I'd guess correctly then have to live with the truth.

Two acres one ranch?

I'll stop.

put it as your user title

...or did you already?

Drat! I wish you would have asked sooner. There's a place a little way from here up in the mountains that has quite a bit of flint. I've seen obsidian, too. Its all under snow now, though. If you still need some next spring?

Wise Acre Ranch?

Dressing, Salad, Ranch?

Raunchy wrench ranch?

The US Forest Service Ranch. :p:

Good lord.Snow already?
Well put me down for a box of rocks in the spring.

Well, yeah. Once you get above 10,000 feet around here, the snow starts to pile up beginning about by about mid November. We just had a storm that closed the passes to the east and north. And the rocks I'm thinking of are at between 9,000 to 10,000. So, spring it is!

yes, snow. La Nina year. did you not see my pics of mt wa hike?

We had snow last month. In friggin Virginia.

3F - I sent you a second PM. Check it out & let me know

Here's a couple of knives my daughters & I made. They're knapped but not paleo. They are styled in the 1700-1820 period. Sorry about the pics, but I use my phone and my tremors make the photos blurry.

Very cool.

One of the most devastating offensive styles I've seen on that show Deadliest Warriors was the Apache with his stone knives. He would have gone farther in the tournament, but having basically no armor ended that.

Wow, that's nice work!

very very nice Sarge!! thanks for showing those beautiful knives.

I do it as a form of therapy to help with my hands & to relieve stress. I'd really love to go paleo like 3F, but it is far more difficult

Sarge, you inspired me and I went out to the recycling bin, fished out an old wine bottle and used an old carriage bolt to make this:

I've no idea how to thin it, much less sharpen it. But I expect I will by the end of the week.

Neato!

3F that looks great!!

Aw shit. Now I'm going to have to try that.

Looks good Foot!

Thanks. I worked on it a bit more last night and it got smaller but not thinner or sharper.
I expect I'll have it down to a tiny nubbin shortly.
Honest to FSM Glatt I woke up this morning thinking you must have been busy with Thanksgiving or otherwise you would have either a) shown us the points you'd made or b) decide you would try your hand at it.

I'll find a link to a few helpful youtube vids and put them up. I can't wait to see what you make.

Post some pics of your bow & arrow shafts if you can. I would never even consider attempting to do what you have already accomplished.

I can rough out chert, work antler or bone, or handle pitch & sinew. Bryanna does the detail work on knapping. Elizabeth does the dying/painting with hide glue & natural pigments

BTW, we do make soap from buffalo fat & lye. Plus we do some work with hides. We're trying to make a batch of pine tar soap next