Striking sparks with quartz

[Pict]

Great video! Thanks for posting that but now my kids will be late to school.

I want to do the same thing with local quartz and a machete if possible. We have clear quartz crystals on the ground here all over. It isn't difficult to locate a clear vein of quartz or run across quartz that looks semi transparent. of course the white quartzite is like gravel.

I'm hoping to test my various machetes. Its good to know from that video that the carbon steel Craftsman throws good sparks. I have been running my course here using the SS Mora Army knives as my official machete companion knife. I have many former students that want to buy them off me used. I'm going to replace them all with carbon knives and start teaching this method once I master it myself.

You guys have helped alot.

Thanks,

Mac

 

[Wayland]

I use quartz and quartzite quite a lot when demonstrating out in Norway.

They have virtually no flint out there so it's a much more accurate demo for the Vikings at home.

As mentioned, method is much the same but less sparks produced.

On Patrick's course we were using local quartzite on the back of my Leuku with reasonable success.

 

[Mike Ameling]

Likewise John
I made a big pile of painfull gravell once - pretty much gave up after that. I must be a glutton for more though as I've signed up for a day with the Lords at the summer moot.

ATB

Ogri the trog

Painful Gravel - that's a nice way to phrase it. Not quite as gruesome as red-streaked rocks. If you are knapping flint, you will BLEED. The better you get at knapping flint, the less you bleed. Just how the world goes round.

I made up these flint strikers for a flint knapper friend - to share with his buddies. They are THICK (5/16 inch THICK!), 1 inch wide and right about 3 inches long - and the bottom end has all the edges rounded and smoothed over. He and his buddies found out that they work great as a flint knapping baton when oot-n-aboot. But they only use them when they don't have their regular flint knapping tools. That THICK metal gives these strikers the strength to hold up to the hammering shock without breaking/cracking, and the mass helps with knapping technique. So now he and his buddies carry around their flint striker, and also have a knapping tool along to touch up flint edges. (But they still prefer their copper tools)

The hardest part of making these was how to hang onto them with tongs while forging out that little curl. I also made him/them some that were completely solid and rounded at each end but with a little hole drilled/punched through for a lanyard.

I haven't found any historical documentation for this particular style/shape, so these are more of a modern interpretation.

Oh, the ... toys ... we play with.

Hi, I'm Mike, and I'm a blacksmith. It's been 2 days since my last forging episode. Hi, Mike. Tell us your story ........

Mikey - yee ol' grumpy blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

 

[Dave Budd]

The quartz here on Dartmoor varies so much from one side to the other it's silly. The stuff I have here to the east is crumbly and pretty much rubbish (though I have found some bits that work well enough to make fire), where as on the western side of the moor (less than 20 miles away) it's nice big single crystals all over!

In fact the quality of the quartz gets so good towards the west that people in parts of Cornwall used it to make their stone tools rather than travel the distances needed to get flint. Where I live there is no flint, crap quartz, crap granite and a nasty iron-rich mudstone! Not the best place for toolmaking me thinks!

 

[hiraeth]

Was at a fairy festival (best not to ask) yesterday and one of the stalls there was doing crystal healing. A nice piece of clear quartz took my eye and at a quid i thought it worth a go.
Been playing with it today and i am very impressed with the quality and amount of sparks it is throwing.