flint collecting

[iowabow]

I have many different types of flint in the creek how do i know which pieces are high quality or not. Should I use the rocks in the creek or should i dig into the bank for rocks that have not frozen in the past. I live in the burlington Iowa area.

[Sparrow]

 Take a good hammerstone or a nice big copper bopper along with you and hit that rock and knock a flake off the end, you'll be able to tell the qaulity right quick.  '  Frank

[iowabow]

ok i can knock a flake from almost every rock down there but some have grain and some small holes... ok I will snap a picture if that will help i am new  and really dont know what makes one type of flint better from another. I have a  qurater mile of flint in a creek to pick from.

[iowabow]

ok here is a pic of two types of rock i picked up the other day. The one that I knocked a off a flake from has little clear flakes in it. Any input would be great.

[arappaho]

Welcome iowabow 
Looks like you have plenty of material to practice and learn with!
Ofcourse the creamy, finer grained material on the right looks better, but
you can't always go by looks. The only way to really tell is bust into it.
The coarser grained stuff on the left may be just as good, but looks like either one
will work. I would suggest just trying to make some biface preforms, as thin as possible
to begin with just to get familiar with the rock and not worry so much about making
a finished point. Sometimes you will work the whole nodule down into a biface and
sometimes you will just knock a spall off to work. Shoot, with all the material you have
available to you, you ought to be a pro by Christmas!
I grew up right down the road from you there in Fairfield. Ain't winters fun!

Later,  Joe

[iowabow]

wow you do know the burlington area! Once it snows it never melts all winter. Makes seeing deer easy (the only plus). i downloaded a pdf on flint knapping percussion wow now that was helpful. Is it strange to have so many different types of flint in one creek? A lot of the stones are more square than round. I liked that tripod idea for removing large flakes the more square stone. Would anyone like to walk me through a stone (this would sound really strange out of context)...other than my wife

[AncientArcher76]

Send some my way I would love to try it!  Anyway I have been searching all day to find this site I had and cant find ...maybe someone has it and can share... It was a list of all the different knappable rock/flint and or chert for each state!  Can someone help? 

Ps if I find it I will post it so u can see it will list all the lithics  for your state


I found something for u!

http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/lithics/

Russ

[iowabow]

lol one of the maps has the deposit cutroad on the other side of the creek from my house. What a great site. I completely forgot that I meet mark anderson that is listed on that web page. Thank you so much for the link.

[iowabow]

That web site was helpful i drove around and located one of the sites and picked up a rock to compare to the stuff i have.

[iowabow]

this is a stone from a creek one ridge over from mine. I have never seen black flint in this area. If this were your stone what would you do to work it. I thought I should hit one end the right or left as seen in the photo. I thought this would create a platform to start working the stone. Would you guys walk me though making arrows head for my new arrows. I can make simple arrow heads but only if I get lucky.

[arappaho]

Well Iowabow, that's a tough one. It would be great if you could find someone in your area
to watch and learn from. It's kindof hard to put the whole process in words because alot of
it depends on how the rock wants to work and you don't know that until you start working it.
I like the looks of that last black stuff, but that doesn't mean it's going to flake well. It could
fracture in a blocky useless mess.
BUT just for the heck of it, it looks like you got three layers there below the dime. I might try
and get it to separate below the middle layer. Try and get the middle and top layer off in one piece
going from front to back in the pic. Try and get it to follow what already looks like a seam there.
That would be one spall or large flake to try and work into a point, then use what's left of your
nodule to try and work another point. Ofcourse you could try and work the whole nodule down
into one point, or it may just break into useless pieces. Don't know till you try.
I see a very large pile of broken rock and flakes in your yard in the future. I'm psychic.
But it looks like you have a good eye for collecting the right material and would suggest you start
to stockpile it. You are going to need it to learn with and if it works well you will be able to
trade or sell it for other things, like money or lessons.
I wonder what kindof tool kit you're working with? Try and get to a knap-in and watch some folks
doing it and keep on watching the available videos. Some of us have to bust up a mountain of
rock before we figure out anything. (That would be me. )

Joe

[gstoneberg]

You guys are making me nostalgic.  I grew up near Aredale, IA and my wife is from Fayette.  She still has brothers in the state, but my family has all moved away.  Some of the best pheasant hunting in the world there when I was a kid.  Haven't been back in years.  I'm also just starting to beat on rock myself.  Be awhile before I can honestly call it knapping.  Good luck.

George

[iowabow]

I have tried to make some arrowheads but to be honest I really don't know how to make a larger stone do what I want.  I have to work with the flakes that I lucky get from trying. Anyway I thought I would post some pictures of these points but understand that I fail12 times for ever one, it is very frustrating. I have a hard time thinning the tail and I am not good at thinning pieces that are not already thin from the start. I also have a hard time deciding where to start on a large stone. I plan on attending a knapping gathering and will keep hitting stone but my big questing is how to get thinning flakes because as I try to thin the angle just gets steeper. My flakes rarely make it to the middle of the biface. These are my tools and I also use the back of a file.

[jamie]

nice work. definitely go on youtube and look up paleomanjim and flintknapping tips.  theres more but those are my favorites. explaning how to flintknap online without video is like reading how to do brain surgery. that piece of rock you in the pic is tabular and that a good thing. the tabsular pieces will be easier for you to get started with. i reccomend you look up a video on stitching. its a zigzag technique to get the edges ready for platforms.

[iowabow]

I think I understand much better about how to work the stone. In the photo there are 3 to 4 layer of flint. The top layer is fine and the lower layers have some kinda flake like mica or something in it. I knocked off an odd shape piece from the top and started removing flakes to isolate the layer I wanted. As I worked I continued to abrade each surface as I went taking my time and the biface below is the result. I know it has steps and hinges but the cool thing is that it is thin and not block like. In the past I could only make something from a thin flake. This rock was ¾ of an inch thick when I started and triangle shaped on one end. I stopped working on it because I did not want to break my break through piece. I was so jazzed that I went out and bought the materials I saw for making a notching tool.