Ive been on an Old Crafty binge today. Boy that honey colored chert was nice! Like to work some bigger chunks of that. I worked some glass today and 1 clunky peice of Aomeba that I couldn't thin down enough.
The best piece I have found (besides the 20lb obsidian out of homestake mining rock pile) was while I was off roading and stopped for lobster tail mushrooms... idk what it is exactly but its this beautiful red/purple color with a chalk like shell. Absolute butter and before I did my research I just smacked it with a hammer to see what was inside. Shattered it into some hard to use pieces but I have sworn I'd get good enough to salvage a few points out of it!
As a loose rule of thumb, Agates form in the voids of igneous rock, and Chert forms exclusively in Bio sedimentary rock like limestone. Not a hard and fast rule but a general guide.
Many times I can't help but comment on& praise your videos. But EVERYTIME you can believe I'm listening to what things you (The Professor) are teaching. Time will tell what kind of student I am. Haha
i have to comb our local river for weeks just to find a so so rock for knapping and when i find one i do a happy dance until i get it home and try to work it .lol there is some tough rock in saskatchewan.
Man if its 10,000 years old and they don't know what it is, they won't care,just tellm your looking for the evidence of the thing that wiped out the dinosaurs, 90% of rocks used to be reptiles anyway.
That is the material you find everywehere in the northern part of germany. Its has been brought there by the glaciers of the ice age which have coverd our area. Gravel pits are the besr places to get some. Sometimes - if you have luck - you find various colours and diameters up to 20 inch and more.
Well damn I been knapping these from a hotel i stayed at and saw these and thought I lucked up and found a bunch if chert so I got a bunch of it and finally found a video that tells me what these stones are.. THANK YOU
SD everyone is digging through landscaping stone at restaurants ect. All looking for the Fairburn agate ... then there's me looking for a new tool or some "chattery" chert
This looks like a nice hobby to pick up, I needed to find ways of spending my free time other than video games, I think I have just found something, i'd like to start practicing this.
+JackCrafty Its more the small and very round shape of them i think rather than the hardness, though it is true that some of these are pretty dense and heat treating could ease it up. In the past I had used hammerstones. I could maybe get one side flat but the other side would be a turtle. That first one you did, that reverse sise was so rough, its cool you were able to get it to work for you. I know id step and hinge it all if I tried that.
At 26:30 you’re skinning flakes off the chunk with the cortex, using an oval hammer stone. You make a point of how you orient the hammer stone and how you hold it to direct the strike. What kind of difference does this make in the energy transfer to the target?
The difference is mainly in how much of the weight of the hammerstone is being used. The weight times the speed determines the energy. More energy is required for thicker, longer flakes. And you can force yourself to make thinner flakes by using less of the mass of the hammerstone by holding the hammerstone so it will pivot during the strike.
I notice those sideways fractures quite a bit myself. I only seem to see them in indirect. I wonder if it has something to do with the stone turning in the hand? Nice stone and vid.
+PaPoints Those sideways fractures seem to happen when there's lots of force in a small area. I see them with hammerstones too but, you're right, I see them a lot with the copper punch. Sometimes I see them when notching as well.
This is the only way I can get flint at the moment. been doing it for a few years and have gotten the best looking material, yet there is freeze cracking in a lot of it. How long should I heat treat agates at a temp below 400 degrees?
The main difference is that aluminum is softer than copper, so there is less shattering during flake removal. It's also cheaper and easier for me to get.
Dear JackCrafty, I live in Tacoma in Washington State. I have been to the railroads and only found rhyolite (which is incredibly difficult for a beginner) I have looked in gravels around parks, streets and parking lots. I've looked at riverbeds and countless beaches. No matter how hard I look around my area, I only seem to find Granite, Quartz, Andesite, a Very hard dark red Jasper (always small fragments too small to work) Rhyolite, gneiss and if I'm lucky, a tiny agate. Where can I find knappable rock? I've checked out Macrostrat.org in an attempt to locate chert / flint but there is hardly any near by. Contrary to most people, central Oregon is pretty far from me and I'd rather not drive all the way out there. Most landscaping rocks here are sourced locally, which is a problem because there is hardly any chert. I actually found obsidian once in the mountains before I even found chert. Please help
The best place to find chert or flint is at a knap-in. Check out Puget Sound Knappers' www.pugetsoundknappers.com/events/events.html Also check out kentuckyflintworks.com and apocalithics on eBay.
Zenmaster6 A little late but still have to comment..From my research and personal experience, I’m pretty sure you are closer to a source than most viewers watching and wishing... I feel like you aren’t trying as hard as you can depending on your motivation.
@@seanarmstrong7767 I looked every day for around 2 to 3 hours a day. Obviously you dont know what youre talking about at all, youve probably never seen a geologic map in your life
@@seanarmstrong7767 Chert is not formed from volcanic eruptions, its formed from the skeletal bodies of diatoms and other micro organisms that use silicon as their shell. After millions of years these metamorphosize into chert. Yes we did have volcanic eruptions in the 1800s but that's at least 3 hours from my house and still no chert, just some scarce obsidian that is again hard to find.
