I am a beginner, even tho I am an experienced lapidary. I started trying to learn how to make simple tools, the way they did, from available local resources. I knew there was a local chert in sizable pieces, and that has since been identified as Burlington.
Everyone says Burlington, like it means one thing. Well, that isn't how it is here. I have brown grainy material, all the way to agate like translucent material. Heck, I even have a piece with a barber pole swirl. I have several grades of Burlington, that do not require any kind of treatment to knap well and easily. The best is almost as easy to work as good true flint, and only obsidian has been easier to work for me.
I can post photos of the various grades I have so far encountered, if needed.
The very best working material so far, is a glassy banded/swirly pure white to gray material. It compares very well with many lapidary materials. It even fractures to a smooth shiny surface, time after time. You can push flakes on it raw with a pressure tool. Unfortunately, the piece I found was float, and badly fractured. The material appears in the creek over a wide area, but it is all in small pieces, about golf ball size. It patinas white or banded. The piece I worked was from near the top of a ridge, in a very steep valley. The top layer was this pure material, but the other parts of the same core were much courser grained and hard to work even with hammer stones. The finer material compares favorably with many agates or fine lapidary materials, and would make a fine polished piece also. So far, it is not translucent, but instead is of a solid color, although it may be swirled or banded. Many of the fine grained smaller pieces appear to be a solid gray inside if struck, even if they were banded in the patina. Some of this material is translucent. If you are used to working with tough stone, you will hit this one too hard in the beginning. Brushing up the edges makes flakes rain like crazy, it can be worked all the way to pressure stage, using antler billets, and one of my billets is a whitetail tine. Both ends can be swung to work the better material. Oddly enough, the tine billet tends to knock almost hollow ground edges when used.
I also found limited quantities of a darker gray material that does things like produce three inch flat flakes, but so far, that supply is very limited.
I even found a version that has sparkles all throughout the material, making it look like it has glitter inside the stone. It works okay, but the edges are not as sharp as the more solid material. It appears to be small crystals locked together in a matrix when you start to work it. For jewelry use, it might make perfect points, but for actual use, it isn't sharp enough or tough enough.
So far, here in northern Jefferson County, the material is mostly the gray stuff that leaves a grainy pebbled surface on flake scars. I found one deposit of a much finer grained material in large pieces. I posted a picture of it in the Jefferson County Chert thread. It is also not translucent. There is a much finer grained gray material that is hidden under a variety of patinas that is common here also. It is very hard to work without treatment of some kind. Some of this material is translucent. It is just hard and tough.
The much better material I was talking about, is from Washington County for the most part. I have found a white material that may or may not be banded, and may or may not be workable there. The very best being this incredible material I have been bragging about, and the worst is thin layers with layers of concrete in between each.
There is a gray material found in larger pieces, with the patina we recognize as Meramec cobble here in this area. It is often in layers also, and is often badly twisted and uneven. Good layers can be worked pretty easy, but I don't know about flaking with pressure or not. Why one forms the brown patina, and the other forms a white or banded patina, is not evident from the material itself. Inside, a flake from each can be confused with each other.
So, when you say Burlington, as so many do, are you describing one certain type of Burlington, or are you discussing it in general? I am not sure the spread of material I have found, even in this short time period of searching, fits under one name or variety.
Describe what you call Burlington, please!
