Laminar Core Technology - Making Flint Blades for  

As a spinner & knitter I've spent decades of happy hours - hunched over, doing intensely detailed work. Now at 71, the collective damage I've done to my upper spine (T11- C3) is not good. Yikes! Kyphoplasty, anyone? I'm concerned about the possible stress your spine may be experiencing via the knapping you do. Yes... I'm trying to gently share my experiential history as a decades-long "lap worker" (if you will). Puleeze, Dr. Dilley, please be cognizant of the potential stress of ANY repetative, life-long, kinetic activity. As you know, spines are very resilient. Yet, as time & aging grinds into our bones 🤔 we DO experience the effects of our beloved repetitive activities. So, from an elder's experience, I hope to delicately suggest that you consider how important the prevention of damage IS in our long term activities. Perhaps it's worth a look? 😉 Anyways... take good care of your body. And... THANK YOU for the fascinating videos you create. They're incredible! 🏆!

I've only just found this channel and I love it... But Doc, I can't stop laughing at your facial expression when that nodule broke in half. Hang on... I'm gonna rewind it.

*angry pause* certainly this would have happened in the past. Ah yes the soothing mantra of any experimental archaeologists 😂😂

This is one of my favourites because I’m just starting out flint knapping, and my goodness I’ve pretty much only had flawed badly behaved flint so far! It’s been very disheartening and I thought I was just utterly terrible at it, so it’s good to see that even a pro can have difficult flint that acts the way mine does. Gives me the motivation to continue but just to find better flint :)

well demonstrate on a gnarly nodule. I prefer to take a crest blade in every case before debitage. Creswell point may have been produce by the micro burin technique I tough? For the problem of snapping your blades of course it arrives but there is a method to minimize it, it is to cover your anvil with a piece of leather (method of Tixier) and it is better to have an anvil with a sharp angle. I learn this because I should have produce more than 130 gravettes for experimentation. All the best.

My wife also says a slight curve helps…

I used to live in Essex England years ago and I would find affluent artifacts and flakes and Deb Ataage in different places when they would be moving the earth to build things etc. I went to one site where they had done excavation trenches and they found a literally thousands of pieces. Some of them were quite nice. I think they found a few polished pieces as well. It was clear from all the remains of things left behind that that particular place had been used for hundreds of years, possibly thousands of years by wave after wave of settlers and hunters for sourcing flint nodules. A lot of the nodules have been washed down the river basin and into the valley floor. Some of the things were dated anywhere from Lake Paleolithic all the way down to measure lithic and neolithic and even the bronze age. It was amazing what I learned about knapping from all the things that we found. We even found what looked like an attempt at making a flint auger for drilling into wood presumably. I haven’t done Flint napping in a number of years. I still have a few pieces that I made and one or two pieces that I found but all the rest I ended up giving to a museum for people to learn from. There is still so much people don’t know about how people made an adapted tools all those years ago. I haven’t watched anybody making blades or flakes in a long time. I’ve enjoyed this video. I still remember the sore fingers :-)

Do you know Peter Viking in Norway? His blade cores are the best Ive ever seen.

Also, to my recollection, the UK doesn’t have any native moose. Would you happen to remember where you acquired moose antler?

A lot of the scrap flakes had nice sharp edges that could be used for cutting purposes even though they might not work in a composite tool like a sickle. Waste not want not.

I've done a fair amount knapping, mostly bifaces using materials such as obsidian sourced from North American west coast and chert from Oklahoma as these materials are relatively plentiful on this side of the Atlantic. Never really tried a core and blade technique before so I really enjoyed watching this video as there isn't many showing off this methodology.

Your videos are fantastic!!

Would you say that there is any advantage to a large copper spalling hammer for spalling nodes over a large hammer stone?

Marvellous. Roll on Season 2! :-)

Thank you for this fantastic series of videos! You have really helped me improve my blade core knapping.

Making Flint Blades with Geralt of Rivia.

Thank you James. Very enjoyable

'even the Mesolithic fans would appreciate this" hahaha really got me with that one xD

Cool stuff man! Blade-making is one aspect of flintknapping I need to invest more time into learning.

Bloomin’ awkward flint... 😂

Fantastik wow👍👍🦌🦌🦌

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Brilliant. Really informative and very well presented. Just a quick question. I live in east Devon and amongst my many flint finds I have a few blade cores. The ridges are quite narrow on some so does this imply they might be mesolithic not neolithic? Also was this technique used in the bronze age? Many thanks

I wonder if heat treating / stress relieving is used for flint in the UK . Another excellent video and Thanks .

Doctor Doctor the other leg! Lol. I love your videos. Carry on. Sorry the look on your face.

The core you have in the thumbnail looks SO close to the 2 clovis cores i have, i always wondered how they did it, thank you for enlightening me!

Loving these videos, can't wait for season 2!

Can I ask where you source your flint? All I can find in my area is building flint, which is better than nothing, but you can't produce decent size blades for making, say, an axe or Clovis type points. And most of what you produce is waste.

Great video Dr. Dilley, I really appreciate your work.

Appreciate the honest persistence! Multiple approaches and techniques.

where are you from?

hiiiii