Flint Knapping
- Thread starter Paul W
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Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.
Hi Paul,
Just wanted to say that as a former archaeologist who spent a lot of time fieldwalking around Silbury Hill and collecting a lot of neolithic knapped pieces from axe heads to arrow heads the quality of your knapping is fantastic. Having tried it ourselves when relaxing in the evening it isn't that easy either. So well done fella I'd put your arrowheads and axe heads with the best I've found or seen whilst working and researching.
Rich
Just wanted to say that as a former archaeologist who spent a lot of time fieldwalking around Silbury Hill and collecting a lot of neolithic knapped pieces from axe heads to arrow heads the quality of your knapping is fantastic. Having tried it ourselves when relaxing in the evening it isn't that easy either. So well done fella I'd put your arrowheads and axe heads with the best I've found or seen whilst working and researching.
Rich
Thanks,
I'm quite into archaeology myself. You're really lucky to be close to probably the finest area in the country to be an archaeologist. Did you work for Wessex Archaeology?
Nice pictures...
Ive have enjoyed what i have been seeing and reading so far.
In April we stop in Sweden to get some lessons of Peter Wiking.
He is a specialist in flintknapping. Hope to make some beautiful pieces like i have seen here.
Ive have enjoyed what i have been seeing and reading so far.
In April we stop in Sweden to get some lessons of Peter Wiking.
He is a specialist in flintknapping. Hope to make some beautiful pieces like i have seen here.
Lovely stuff all of it. I would love to stick one of those on an arrow and let it fly from one of my self bows. They must have some penetration and please, keep showing off.
Er...wow.
I tried knapping at the moot a couple years back and so I can really appreciate the time and skill required for these, I on;y managed a hand axe, which still looked like a lump of flint that someone had dropped in the discarded pile ,even though Will had told me where to hit for about ten minutes lol!
Great work!
I tried knapping at the moot a couple years back and so I can really appreciate the time and skill required for these, I on;y managed a hand axe, which still looked like a lump of flint that someone had dropped in the discarded pile ,even though Will had told me where to hit for about ten minutes lol!
Great work!
My inspiration to try this was finding a nice arrow head at work a few years back and my Uncle finding what looks like a spear head in his back garden. I had a go for a few weeks after watching vids on Youtube. I had to switch to spending my time on other stuff, but I'm intending to get back into it. Still got a stack of flakes and partially worked stuff, with the inevitable heap of shrapnel. I think actually I spent nearly as much time making up tools from antler and copper etc., as I did actual knapping, and that was fun too. Nothing produced to shout about yet, the local material seems rather difficult to work, and large pieces to work down are very much on the rare side. I pick up the biggest bits from excavations done at work.
robin wood
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Beautiful work there Paul. Like Bigrich, I go hunting the fields near my home here in the U.S. I'm not an archeologist, or even a former one like him. I just do it for the shear joy of finding something that a man made long, long ago, to feed and put clothing on his family and fellow members of his tribe.
I've been going out and hunting these tools for years, and I agree with Bigrich, these rate right up there with the pieces that I find in the fields. There were a great many camps and settlements near my home.
I have a friend that also goes hunting them, and because he is self-employed, he gets to go hunt them a lot more than I do, and gets to travel further afield across the state. He is a close friend of the curator at our local Museum of Natural History, and often takes his better finds to show him. One particular find that was the sort of "Crown Jewel" of his collection, was an axe that was knapped and flaked from a very large piece of your country's own black flint. It was about 8 inches in length, about 5 inches at the wide end, and tapered down to a point at the opposite. It was also knapped and flaked to where the middle was about 3 inches thick, and tapered down to beautiful wedge shapes at both ends.
He really was lucky to find it, because he hadn't found anything all day, and was just about to give up and return home when he spotted it. The real luck, was the fact that it was in that field for so many years, and had never been hit by a farmers plow, and damaged like so many of the pieces that we find. It truely was a museum quality piece, and as a matter of fact, his friend tried to purchase it from him for the museum's display of local, Native American artifacts. He even went so far as to telling him to "name his price, and he would gladly pay it". Of course he didn't sell it, but it was amazing to hear the curator say that.
I really like your knife with the Rainbow Obsidian, and the opal points are really nice. But be very, very, very, careful with them. Opal is a very curious type of stone. I have studied geology when I was younger, and know of a couple of folks that had opal as their birthstones. They had some real nice pieces of jewlery with opals set in them. It fractures readily, almost TOO readily in some cases, and the piece, if hit just right, and in the right spot.......will explode and disintigrate to a pile of chips and dust.
All your pieces are beautiful. Keep up the great work, and if you get the chance to do it, pass the knowledge on to the next generations so that it won't become a lost art.
I've been going out and hunting these tools for years, and I agree with Bigrich, these rate right up there with the pieces that I find in the fields. There were a great many camps and settlements near my home.
I have a friend that also goes hunting them, and because he is self-employed, he gets to go hunt them a lot more than I do, and gets to travel further afield across the state. He is a close friend of the curator at our local Museum of Natural History, and often takes his better finds to show him. One particular find that was the sort of "Crown Jewel" of his collection, was an axe that was knapped and flaked from a very large piece of your country's own black flint. It was about 8 inches in length, about 5 inches at the wide end, and tapered down to a point at the opposite. It was also knapped and flaked to where the middle was about 3 inches thick, and tapered down to beautiful wedge shapes at both ends.
He really was lucky to find it, because he hadn't found anything all day, and was just about to give up and return home when he spotted it. The real luck, was the fact that it was in that field for so many years, and had never been hit by a farmers plow, and damaged like so many of the pieces that we find. It truely was a museum quality piece, and as a matter of fact, his friend tried to purchase it from him for the museum's display of local, Native American artifacts. He even went so far as to telling him to "name his price, and he would gladly pay it". Of course he didn't sell it, but it was amazing to hear the curator say that.
I really like your knife with the Rainbow Obsidian, and the opal points are really nice. But be very, very, very, careful with them. Opal is a very curious type of stone. I have studied geology when I was younger, and know of a couple of folks that had opal as their birthstones. They had some real nice pieces of jewlery with opals set in them. It fractures readily, almost TOO readily in some cases, and the piece, if hit just right, and in the right spot.......will explode and disintigrate to a pile of chips and dust.
All your pieces are beautiful. Keep up the great work, and if you get the chance to do it, pass the knowledge on to the next generations so that it won't become a lost art.
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