Techniques for Flintknapping

Summary: Flintknapping is the process of reducing a stone (usually of a cryptocrystalline texture like flint or chert) by flaking or chipping pieces away. Both the removed flakes and the remaining stone are useful for making tools such as knives, arrowheads, and hand axes. Using hard hammers like rocks and soft hammers like antlers or born, a good flintknapper can chip many small cutting edges or potential arrowheads from a single stone. The stone actually flakes off sharp shards in a reasonably predictable way. Once a flake is selected, other tools help the flintknapper chip it into a sharp knife or arrowhead. In this free video series you'll see expert flintknapper John Olsen demonstrate how to take an obsidian stone and turn it into a knife blade. He uses "percussion" flaking to chip off large flakes of rock, and "pressure" flaking to more carefully reduce and sharpen the blade. John will also show you how to dull the handheld edges by basel grinding. Finally, you will see how to make an arrowhead from hornstone. This is how it was done in the stone age, and John will show you how to make authentic stone age tools today!