Adventures in Flintknapping - Part 6 - Five Weeks In

With the holidays over I am now able to make some time to write a little more about my knapping progress.  At the time I started writing this article It had been about 5 weeks since I started to learn this new skill of flintknapping.  I thought I would post a picture of all of the points and preforms that have survived so far.  There are twenty three survivors in about thirty five days.

23 survivors in 35 days

Knapping is turning out to be a rewardable experience.  I am very glad I decided to try it out.  I have also had my fist experience of the outstanding community of knappers.  The photo below is of the beautiful stone that I was given by the great folks at Goknapping.com.  I would like to say thank you and I hope to be able to do the stone the justice that it deserves.

 Some really pretty Christmas stone from Goknapping.com

I am still having difficulty with the occasional break.  It seems to stem from trying to 'dig into' the piece too agressively. The last three breaks all came from the same type of miss strike where I was trying for a flake through a hump. 

Still breaking a few

I still need to get my hand strength up for better pressure flaking and learn notching.  But all in all I am fairly happy with my progress so far.

I do have to apologize for the long delay, I have been researching topics for the indoor bushcraft series.