Knapping flints

[Eric Krewson]

A guy posted this question under the Rules thread above so I moved his question down here to give him an answer.

"Haowdy(that's Ga for hello) Gotta flinter, pedersoli, a nice Penn, been smokin some (powder,black) and been told y gotta keep yer flints SHARP. So how often should one knapp their flints, been told every shot. Btw I've got english flints..."

Good quality flints only need to knapped every 25 shots or so and possibly up to once every 100 shots if your lock geometry is just right. Some locks are flint bashers, on these locks the flint hits the frizzen straight on instead of striking it at an scraping angle.

If you get a miss fire and the pan doesn't flash it is time to knap the flint.

The easiest way to sharpen a flint is to put your finger under sharp edge, tight against the flint and very lightly tap the edge all the way across with just about anything metallic.

There are more styles of knapping tools than you can count, everyone has his own take upon the subject. Some are for use as I mentioned, some are little drifts that you put against the flint and tap with another object.

Here are some of the things people use, some quite ingenious.

https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=58745.0

I use a flint flaker like one would work arrowheads with. Sometimes I hold it in two hands and get agressive, sometimes I put the copper tip against the flint and tap the antler handle with my round head ball starter.

[Parnell]

As much knapping as I've done I haven't fiddled with cleaning up a flint, yet.  I'm going to do some shooting this week.  I think I'll play around with this for the first time.

[Deerhunter21]

thats super interesting... wow!

[Eric Krewson]

I always sharpen my flint before I go hunting if I haven't already done so. More sparks the quicker your gun will go off, very important when you draw down on a deer.

[mullet]

I've started making my flints.

[JW_Halverson]

I've started making my flints.

I'd like to see 'em!

Got any fossilized coral gunflints?

[Eric Krewson]

I have a large cookie tin with about 15 lbs of broken arrow heads in it, almost all would make good gun flints. A while back I picked one out, narrowed it to fit my cock jaws and gave it a try, it sparked really well.

I posted this info on a M/L site and some people went ballistic about me destroying history. All my culls were picked up 45 years ago or more from dozens of bean fields and river banks whose locations are lost in time.  I have all the good ones saved and passed them down to my granddaughter a few years ago.

I even donated a bowl to the local museum. I know it was from a Mississippian burial because the other 5 pots with it were shell tempered. This was all before there were laws about such activity, the area had been heavily "mined" for 50 years. We just happened upon a burial that someone had dug but quit on while we were field finding arrowheads. It had rained and washed the edge of the hole in the mound, a rib cage and pot were exposed, turns out there were 3 more pots and one bowl next to the one exposed as well as 3 trophy skulls. Like I said, no laws at the time and we were young.

The museum declared the bowl woodland and were overjoyed to have it.

Here it is;

[mullet]

JW, let me get my camera out and I'll take some pictures. I've been chipping them out of English Flint, Georgetown and Hornestone mostly. Agatized Coral does spark pretty good.