This mega flint knapping kit includes all necessary tools
and enough rock to get you started, plus two of the best instructional aides on
the market today.
Kit includes:
- Medium 1 inch Copper Bopper Billet
- Copper Tipped Wood Pressure Flaker
- Silicon Carbide Abrader
- Medium Leather Leg Pad (* Rubber leg pad available
upon request. See instructions below)
- Leather Hand Pad
- 3 lbs Select Flintknapping Stone (Mix may contain
Novaculite, Keokuk, Dacite and/or Obsidian)
- 12 Page Basic Instructional Booklet
- Basic Flintknapping Techniques DVD (63 min.)
- The Art of Flintknapping Book by D.C. Waldorf
- Hand Knapped India Jasper Specimen Point
The copper bopper billet included in this kit
features a lead core that provides a comfortable weight forward strike
and soft impact.
Kit comes in a white tabbed box with a label. Great Gift
Item!
Flintknapping involves sharp stone flakes and is not for all
ages. Please gift responsibly.
*Substitute a medium rubber leg pad instead of leather for
no extra charge. Simply specify request on the 'Special Instructions" field on
order checkout page.
General Information on Flintknapping
Flintknapping, or Lithic reduction involves the use of a hard hammer
percusor, such as a hammerstone, a soft hammer billet (made of wood, bone or
antler), or a wood or antler punch to detach lithic flakes from a lump of tool
stone called a lithic core. As flakes are detached in sequence, the original
mass of stone is reduced; hence the term for this process. Flintknapping may be
performed in order to obtain sharp flakes, on which a variety of tools can be
made, or to rough out a blank for later refinement into a projectile point,
knife, or other object. Flakes of regular size that are at least twice as long
as they are broad are called blades. Lithic tools produced this way may be
bifacial (exhibiting flaking on both sides) or unifacial (exhibiting flaking on
one side only).
Percussion reduction
Percussion reduction, or percussion flaking, refers to removal of flakes by
striking a core or other objective piece, such as a partially formed tool, with
a hammer or percussor. Percussors are traditionally either a stone cobble or
pebble, often referred to as a hammerstone, or a billet made of bone, antler, or
wood. Often, flakes are struck from a core using a punch, in which case the
percussor never actually makes contact with the objective piece. This technique
is referred to as indirect percussion.
Soft-hammer percussion
Soft-hammer percussion involves the use of a billet, usually made of wood,
bone, antler, or metal (modern) as the percussor. Flakes produced in this manner
are generally smaller and thinner than those produced by hard-hammer
(hammerstone) flaking; thus, soft-hammer flaking is often used after hard-hammer
flaking in a lithic reduction sequence to do finer work.
Pressure flaking
Pressure flaking is a method of trimming the edge of a stone tool by removing
small, fine flakes by pressing on the stone with a sharp instrument rather than
striking it with a percussor. This method, which often uses punches made from
bone or antler tines (or, among modern hobbyists, copper punches or even nails),
provides a greater means of controlling the direction and quantity of the
applied force than when using even the most careful percussive flaking. Copper
retoucheurs to facilitate this process were widely employed in the Early Bronze
Age – and may therefore be associated with Beaker Culture in northwestern
Europe.
The use of pressure flaking facilitated the early production of sharper and
more finely detailed tools. Pressure flaking also gave toolmakers the ability to
create notches where the objective piece could be bound more securely to the
shaft of the weapon or tool and increasing the object's utility.
An archaeological discovery in 2010 in Blombos Cave, South Africa, places the
use of pressure flaking by early humans to make stone tools back to 73,000 BCE,
55,000 years earlier than previously accepted. The previously accepted date, "no
more than 20,000 years ago", was based upon the earliest evidence previously
available, which derived from findings of the Upper Paleolithic Solutrean
culture in France and Spain.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia