Bragging and gloating!

[waksupi]

I just got 50 7/8" X 1" English rifle flints on Ebay for $60 delivered! Woo hoo!

[Cosmiceyes]

When it comes to flints,how do you recognize high quality from lower quality? Don't claim to know anything about it. I just wanted to learn a little something! Thanks :)'s

[BrassMagnet]

When it comes to flints,how do you recognize high quality from lower quality? Don't claim to know anything about it. I just wanted to learn a little something! Thanks :)'s

Me too!

[waksupi]

English Black and French Amber flints are the best quality. I've tried both, and really don't have a preference. Both seem to work equally well, and are pretty equal in durability.
I'm hoping these are well shaped. Tom Fuller is the main supplier of English flints, so I am assuming these are some of his stock. In general with the English black flints, the darker the color, the better they are. If you can hand select, watch for fissures and cracks. I prefer those with a "flat" platform on the top, rather than the peaked types. Flat seems to stay in place better in the jaws.
I have tried some of Rich Pierce's Burlington Chert flints. The price is right, but they are harder than the imports, and really chew up a frizzen. I save those for emergency use. Dixie also sells some kind of domestic flints, that are referred to as Arkansas driveway gravel.
They will spark, but you may not get GOOD spark from them. I think they are made from leaverites.
I suggest avoiding sawn flints, I've never seen one that will last nearly as well as a knapped flint.
Anyway, I should get at least 5000 shots from these.

[Cosmiceyes]

Wow! Thanks! That is some really good info. It always surprise me how much I don't know. I really enjoy reading all the multiple types,shapes,and countries you gave reference to.The reference to how many shots you get makes me wonder what explorers did so many years ago? That would be a interesting read if there was a book about it. Maybe I can find some reference by Lewis an Clark in their travels. Your always gracious with your knowledge! :)'s

[tomme boy]

Real flint comes from France and Britain right? Chert is not really a flint is it? I'm trying to remember from listening to some friends that collect artifacts from the American Indians. Isn't there a huge deposit of flint or chert or whatever they used in Texas. I thought that was were a lot of this type of stuff came from that was used as trade?

[waksupi]

Hopefully DeanD will weigh in on this, as he is the real lithic expert. Texas does have a flint that I have worked with a bit. It is sparky, but like the Burlington Chert, is a hard composition that I think would wear a frizzen faster than I prefer. I believe the flint in the Dakotas is a true flint, and is nice to work with. Most eastern projectile points were chert, or some other substance than true flint I believe. I'm no rock expert, I just know what works well in a flint lock.

I think in Lewis and Clark's journals it may mention all the supplies they took. I would guess probably not all that many flints. I would be willing to bet that most of the men didn't fire more than a couple hundred shots, if that, on the whole journey.

Ha! Found a list of their supplies.

55-foot (17-meter) Keelboat
2 Pirogues (open boats)
Square sail (also called a broad sail)
35 Oars
2 Horses


Camping Equipment
150 Yards (140 meters) of cloth to be oiled and sewn into tents and sheets
6 Large needles
Pliers
Chisels
Handsaws
Oilskin bags
25 Hatchets
Whetstones
30 Steels for striking or making fire
Iron corn mill
2 Dozen tablespoons
Mosquito curtains
10.5 Pounds (5 kilograms) of fishing hooks and fishing lines
12 Pounds (5.4 kilograms) of soap
193 Pounds (87.5 kilograms) of "portable soup" (a thick paste concocted by boiling down beef, eggs, and vegetables, to be used if no other food was available on the trail)
3 Bushels (106 liters) of salt
Writing paper, ink and crayons


Clothing
45 Flannel shirts
20 Coats
15 Frocks
Shoes
Woolen pants
15 Blankets
Knapsacks
30 Stockings
15 Pairs wool overalls


Medicine
50 Dozen Dr. Rush's patented "Rush's Thunderclapper" pills
Lancets
Forceps
Syringes
Tourniquets
1,300 Doses of physic
1,100 Doses of emetic
3,500 Doses of diaphoretic (sweat inducer)
Additional drugs


Arms
15 Prototype Model 1803 muzzle-loading .54-caliber rifles "Kentucky Rifles"
15 Gun slings
24 Large knives
Powder horns
500 Rifle flints
420 Pounds (191 kilograms) of sheet lead for bullets
176 Pounds (80 kilograms) of gunpowder packed in 52 lead canisters
1 Long-barreled rifle that fired its bullet with compressed air, rather than by flint, spark, and powder


Mathematical Instruments
Surveyor's compass
Hand compass
1 Hadley's quadrant
1 Telescope
3 Thermometers
2 Sextants
1 Set of plotting instruments
1 Chronometer (needed to calculate longitude; at $250 it was the most expensive item)
1 Portable microscope
1 Tape measure


Presents for Indian Tribes Encountered
12 Dozen pocket mirrors
4,600 Sewing needles
144 Small scissors
10 Pounds (4.5 kilograms) of sewing thread
Silk ribbons
Ivory combs
Handkerchiefs
Yards of bright-colored cloth
130 Rolls of tobacco
Tomahawks that doubled as pipes
288 Knives
8 Brass kettles
Vermilion face paint
20 Pounds (9 kilograms) of assorted beads, mostly blue
5 Pounds (2 kilograms) of small, white, glass beads
288 Brass thimbles
Armbands
Ear trinkets


Books, Tables, and Maps
A Practical Introduction to Spherics and Nautical Astronomy
Antoine Simon's Le Page du Pratz's History of Louisiana
Barton's Elements of Botany
Dictionary (4-volume)
Linnaeus (2-volume edition), the Latin classification of plants
Richard Kirwan's Elements of Mineralogy
The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris
Tables for finding longitude and latitude
Map of the Great Bend of the Missouri River

[DW475]

Thanks for sharing that list, very interesting.

[Silfield]

Black flint is the local stone here in Norfolk, England and has been used extensively for house and barn building for approx 500+ years (the Romans built a couple of forts/castles just down the road from here with it around 300AD) as well as being used more recently for musket flints. A few miles down the road from here is Grimes Graves that is a surviving Neolithic flint mine that has been active for over 5000 years and the flints were used for arrow heads, axes and spear tips. You can pick up flints everywhere ranging in size from an apple to a watermelon and Neolithic arrowheads are regularly found.
This man is a good source of black musket flints and it may be worth sending him an email to confirm if he ships to the US (I am pretty sure he does thou!)
https://www.peterdyson.co.uk/acatalog/FLINTLOCK_ACCESSORIES.html

Ps. There are two large US airbases in the area so it might be worth doing a bit of detective work and find a friendly airman who is willing to bring some flints home with them.

[waksupi]

Black flint is the local stone here in Norfolk, England and has been used extensively for house and barn building for approx 500+ years (the Romans built a couple of forts/castles just down the road from here with it around 300AD) as well as being used more recently for musket flints. A few miles down the road from here is Grimes Graves that is a surviving Neolithic flint mine that has been active for over 5000 years and the flints were used for arrow heads, axes and spear tips. You can pick up flints everywhere ranging in size from an apple to a watermelon and Neolithic arrowheads are regularly found.
This man is a good source of black musket flints and it may be worth sending him an email to confirm if he ships to the US (I am pretty sure he does thou!)
https://www.peterdyson.co.uk/acatalog/FLINTLOCK_ACCESSORIES.html

Ps. There are two large US airbases in the area so it might be worth doing a bit of detective work and find a friendly airman who is willing to bring some flints home with them.

He does have some intertesting items. Running the conversion factor, he is much higher than what we pay here, though!

[tomme boy]

We find a bunch of waste chert here in the creeks and fields. I found this earlier this year. Not sure if it is a scraper or what?? The scrap sparks but not very well. There were a lot of the Sauk Indians in the area this was found.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/tommeboy/IMG_0274.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/tommeboy/media/IMG_0274.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/tommeboy/IMG_0273.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/tommeboy/media/IMG_0273.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/tommeboy/IMG_0275.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/tommeboy/media/IMG_0275.jpg.html)

[waksupi]

We find a bunch of waste chert here in the creeks and fields. I found this earlier this year. Not sure if it is a scraper or what?? The scrap sparks but not very well. There were a lot of the Sauk Indians in the area this was found.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/tommeboy/IMG_0274.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/tommeboy/media/IMG_0274.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/tommeboy/IMG_0273.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/tommeboy/media/IMG_0273.jpg.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/tommeboy/IMG_0275.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/tommeboy/media/IMG_0275.jpg.html)

That looks like the Burlington chert that Pierce uses. I have a couple projectile points from that area that I believe are from the same stone.

[TenTea]

I was exploring the site of an old homestead in a wilderness area (Shawnee NF) in Southern Illinois a few years back and discovered a spot at the base of a cliff where knappers had worked.
There were flakes and chips of local stone covering the ground in one area near some convenient and shaded sitting spots.
The site was a great campsite, so possibly the homestead had been built near an older indian site.
Could have been making arrowheads or tools out of flint or chert...not sure?
Wish I had taken some samples but I was backpacking and traveling light.

[waksupi]

I was exploring the site of an old homestead in a wilderness area (Shawnee NF) in Southern Illinois a few years back and discovered a spot at the base of a cliff where knappers had worked.
There were flakes and chips of local stone covering the ground in one area near some convenient and shaded sitting spots.
The site was a great campsite, so possibly the homestead had been built near an older indian site.
Could have been making arrowheads or tools out of flint or chert...not sure?
Wish I had taken some samples but I was backpacking and traveling light.

Those are good spots to find. If you search around them, throw a stone about the size they would have had to work with. Like us, if they screwed up a project, they would fling it out in the bushes. That makes your search area to cover!

[Cosmiceyes]

I wonder what the cost was for the flints back then? History is great! That is quite a list. I wish they had pictures of some items.I don't smoke,but a roll of Tobacco would be a item on the picture list. I see the list has books on plants probably to help in the search for food?!

I have some stones I collected in Virginia from a hunt when I lived in Va. They are a variety of colors that are a slick as flint,but greens blues,and white. I will take pictures of them,and post them. As I wonder if they are a chirt?

[Beerd]

History is great! That is quite a list. I wish they had pictures of some items.I don't smoke,but a roll of Tobacco would be a item on the picture list.

probably something like this 112883
..

[Cosmiceyes]

Ah,I have tasted,and seen this a Twist chewing tobacco! LOL Didn't think to apply to smoking! Thank You! :)'s

[waksupi]

I wonder what the cost was for the flints back then? History is great! That is quite a list. I wish they had pictures of some items.I don't smoke,but a roll of Tobacco would be a item on the picture list. I see the list has books on plants probably to help in the search for food?!

I have some stones I collected in Virginia from a hunt when I lived in Va. They are a variety of colors that are a slick as flint,but greens blues,and white. I will take pictures of them,and post them. As I wonder if they are a chirt?

The books of plants were meant to help with the study of botany. They made many sketches of plants along the way, along with fauna.


That twist tobacco is some strong stuff! Best mixed as a kinnickinnick. Lewis and Clark preferred the Arikara tobacco they found upstream. Milder, with a lower nicotine content than "American" tobacco.

[Beerd]

I was exploring the site of an old homestead in a wilderness area (Shawnee NF) in Southern Illinois a few years back and discovered a spot at the base of a cliff where knappers had worked.
There were flakes and chips of local stone covering the ground in one area near some convenient and shaded sitting spots.
The site was a great campsite, so possibly the homestead had been built near an older indian site.
Could have been making arrowheads or tools out of flint or chert...not sure?
Wish I had taken some samples but I was backpacking and traveling light.

I found a spot like that once on the west side of the Pryor Mountains. Not a homestead though, it was a group of teepee rings.


Those are good spots to find. If you search around them, throw a stone about the size they would have had to work with. Like us, if they screwed up a project, they would fling it out in the bushes. That makes your search area to cover!

Maybe I'll go back to look for that place again, but probably not. On BLM land so "Take nothing but pictures"
..

[Dean D.]

I'm no expert but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express once! I started collecting rocks as soon as I could crawl in the gravel driveway and finally learned the art of Lapidary (gemstone cutting) while in the military in the 70s.

My "go to" website for all things rock related, www.Mindat.org (http://www.Mindat.org) , has this posted on it's forum concerning "Flint vs Chert":

Chert: “A cryptocrystalline variety of Quartz - found in layers and nodules in sedimentary rocks, typically light in color. Technically, it is a "rock" - not a mineral - but it is usually classified as a variety of Quartz for convenience's sake, since it is usually composed largely of quartz grains with few other minerals involved. Chert is similar to flint, but light in color, and formed in a somewhat different environment.”

Flint: “A granular cryptocrystalline variety of quartz, typically dark in color. Technically a rock - not a mineral - but it is usually classified as a variety of quartz for convenience's sake, being composed largely of grains of quartz with few other minerals involved. Similar to chert, but dark, and it forms in a somewhat different environment.”

These explanations are oversimplified and in part incorrect. Chert and flint are indeed microcrystalline (not cryptocrystalline) quartz. They are microcrystalline, not granular (that’s two different things). Secondary chert and flint are essentially identical–flint is simply a variety of chert. Chert is found as nodules to layers (layers if the nodules grew so much as to coalesce) in coarse-grained limestone poor in organic matter, so it is light in color and may have various tints of yellow, red, or brown from iron oxide. Flint also forms in limestone, typically in chalk or recrystallized chalk. The limestone is very fine grained and is rich in organic matter and reduced iron, having formed in deep, quiet water. Such a rock is dark colored. The silica replaces carbonate before the rock can become oxidized, and it surrounds and protects the organic matter and reduced iron, even when it is uplifted to near the Earth’s surface where oxidation can occur. Thus, you find black flint nodules in white chalk or limestone.

Much chert in the rock record is primary chert. It forms in deep marine water by accumulation of microscopic skeletal material (radiolarians and diatoms) forming radiolarite and diatomite, which recrystallize to “bedded chert” if buried deeply enough. This is the origin of diatomite (never buried deeply) and bedded chert (at one time buried thousands of meters) in the Monterey Formation of California. Primary chert also seems to have formed in Precambrian times in reducing marine environments close to sea-floor volcanic activity or submarine vents (source of silica), such as the Gunflint Formation bedded cherts in northern Minnesota and Ontario. Thus it forms in conditions unlike secondary chert and the variety of chert called flint.

There is a common (mis)understanding of what flint is. The flint hills of Kansas, for example, are rich in chert but contain no flint at all. In the flint photo gallery at mindat, photos 261907 and 289510 can be defended as flint, although I do not think they are very representative. The example used on the flint mineral data page as an example is very clearly not flint–very clearly, not even close. All other photos in the flint gallery are not flint. They are either chert, or jasper (red, yellow, brown, or orange variety of chert), or agate (interlaminated chert and chalcedony)

More information can be found over on another fine website where flint knappers congregate: http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/directory

I have recently bought some Georgetown "Flint" which comes from Texas that I think would make excellent gunflints. I hope to try knapping some when time allows and will post my thoughts on how well it works when I can.

Basically in a nutshell I would say that if you find a chert which fractures in a choncoidal (sea shell shaped) flake and has a nice smooth almost glassy/waxy (not granular) surface on the fracture it should be acceptable gunflint material...provided it will spark...! Glass and Obsidian are amorphous solids. They will fracture choncoidally but will not spark due to their low hardness and lack of crystaline structure.

I think much of the reason for the differentiation between Flint and Chert is due to the fact that for years the only source of gunflints was England and France. The marketing and sales of gunflints was big business in it's day and to protect that business they refused to recognize any foreign source of Chert as a true Flint. Pure supposition on my part but it fits the pattern of early trade tactics and history.

I am sure there are suitable "flint" sources in the US that would make just as good of a gunflint as English or French but sadly knapping gunflints is pretty much a dead art. Rich Pierce being one of the few in the US who knaps and sells gunflints from native material.

If you want an interesting read on the subject of gunflints I highly recommend: The Manufacture of Gunflints by Sydney B. J. Skertchly

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25615647?uid=3739960&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104569110303

I liked it so much I bought the hardbound book!

I hope this helps and doesn't add confusion to the discussion!

[doc1876]

waksupi you did real good! I miss having a good flinter around. all I have left is a Queen Ann Pistol, and I haven't even fired her. Sold my real good Brown Bess a year ago. When we can no longer get ammo, the flintock is the only way on will survive.

[Char-Gar]

The Texas flint is Alibates flint from a 1,000 year old hand dug quarry north of Amarillo in the Panhandle. Folks have been taking flint from there for 13,000 years but the quarry is only 1,000 years old. Through trade this stuff has ended up all over North America. The Feds now protect is as a national monument.