If you don't recall I had been sold a few pieces of what I was told was obsidian. It was black, shiny, and somewhat transparent, so I didn't reallly question it, until I started to whack at it and noticed it was superhard, and sometimes would form a white blister where I'd whack it instead of breaking off a flake, and after a few seconds those blisters would pop and shoot out little glass dust. I got on here and was asking if any brothers could confirm or disconfirm whether it sounded like obsidian or not and most thought it sounded like it was, and that I just was hitting it at the wrong angle and crushing it, thus forming blisters. I am new at knapping, but it turns out knew enough of what I was doing to suspect that this WAS NOT obsidian.
I went to the Morgantown self bow "jamboree" and found a guy there that was knapping and said he had been doing it for 10 years. I gave him a piece of what I had and he thought it was obsidian too, until he tried bopping it with his good copper bopper. He said this was wayyyyyyyyyyyy too hard and strange to be obsidian and that he had NEVER in his knapping life found any type of obsidian that was this hard. He concluded it must be TEMPERED BLACK GLASS.
And now ladies and gentlemen...you know...the rest.........of the story. Mystery solved.
~Matt
