Probably the wrong forum, but...

[yakker]

Having looked up these things, there doesn't seem to be a forum for such things. They mostly land here as people find them thinking they're maybe worked N.A. stone- only to find that they're actually gun flints! Maybe they should be in the Rev. War forum... But not in 'Relics'- as they're not detected by metal detecting. (Maybe there should be an 'American Mudlarking' forum here...?

I went back up the Maryland to check on my house (still for sale), and went out to one of my favorite spots- which has options for long walks and very short 'look-see's'. Having just twisted the he!! out of my ankle, I opted for the nearest spot, hoping something might have washed out or in while I was in VA. I didn't see an flakes or points, but after a cold and windy search, I did find a nice little- and nearly exhausted French gun flint! So here it is, along with my growing collection of these cool little items! Thanks for looking- and HH all Yakker



from a hunt just before I moved- very weathered...



and the rest...



Cheers

 

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[timekiller]

To many of the blue ones turn up in old forts & home sites to just say they are all made by native americans.

 

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[Charl]

Thats a nice find and a coincidence, yakker. A friend of mine took a walk with me in one of my fields yesterday, and found what is apparently a gunspall type of gunflint, as opposed to a blade style gunflint. He kindly let me add it to my collection from that field. Gun spalls show bulbs of percussion, as the one he found does. First photo below shows bulb of percussion top left corner, with beveled heel being the top edge.English stopped making them and switched to the French blade style gunflints at end of 1700's. Absence of a flat spot on top would make it easy to slip, so I guess this is an "inferior" product. Until yesterday, I had never seen a gunspall style, and without a flat spot on top, I thought it was a scraper until further research. The leading edge does show use as a gunflint though, but it would have been less stable when in place, I'm guessing. A friend of mine from Great Britain is going to fill me in on this one later today, but I think It's a gunspall style gunflint. True color is first photo above. It's grey, not green....

 

[Charl]

Beveled heel and top face, showing difference from blade gunflints.

 

[yakker]

Hey Charlie- good reading and diagrams! I'll have to double-check everything I have now that I've got this new info And great input from everyone! Especially the (possible)origins of the blue-grey ones (so different from the English or French varieties) and being able to date them (all). I was wondering whether I should have posted them in the Revolutionary forum. But nearly all the war forums seem to focus on various artillery and ammo.

The area I've found the most flints- all varieties- was a river where the Rev. war took quite a toll- old stone chimneys dot the riversides as reminders of the fire damage.

I've written the webmaster guru (whoever that may be) to consider having a forum for 'American Mudlarks'- so those of us who find this and that along the water's edge- without a 'specific' material goal (like metal, stone/gem, N.A. artifact, etc) could have a safe haven to show out assorted wares. We'll see if they bite

Maybe more folks have some flints to show!? If so, post away!! HH- Yakker

 

[GatorBoy]

Sure...

 

[Tnmountains]

Great gun flints. I have never found one that I know of. I do have what the flint would have gone into and then clamped down.Maybe I will find one some day.

 

[GatorBoy]

Aaaarrr! Nice! I need 1 of those!
I like the way you skated around the name

 

[rock]

I have others I found but here is 5 I have handy. Some are thick that I find but have multiple strike marks on them. I get them confused with scrapers sometimes. I have others but probably in my scraper bags. I use to find small flint cores and wonder how they got so small. Probably spent flints instead.

 

[Charl]

yakker, my friend from Great Britain offered this information on the gunspall my friend found and the difference from gunflints. I see from all the photos in this thread that some are gunspalls, and some are gunflints. The gunspall technology is older, but continued in use through the first half of 1800's, after the prismatic snap blade gunflints, which is the type you found, French made, and which started this thread.
----------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------
"Just to clarify the terminology here. There are three main ways to make these things. You can individually knap them from small cores or shattered cobbles using bipolar reduction and direct percussion (usually producing one or perhaps two non-uniform items per session); you can knap them from short blade cores off a cobble (and certainly get a couple or more semi-uniform items by that route); or you can systematically mass-produce them from longer blade cores (mechanically snapping the blades to produce a series of relatively uniform items). Those three methods represent a general time progression from the 1550’s (rough items used for the forerunner of the flintlock, known as the snaphance gun) through to recent times, with the first purpose-made items appearing around 1650. There is date overlap between them and – in America – the likely dating possibilities may also be constrained by the quantities of what was actually exported from the Old World.

Although the terms gunflint and gunspall are used interchangeably by some folks, the conventional definition is that “gunspall” is reserved for the irregular, teardrop and then scallop shell shaped and thick wedge items, with more extensive edge trimming (unifacial) as time progresses; “gunflint” is reserved for the later prismatically shaped snap-blade items that originated in France around 1740 (as a closely guarded military/commercial secret). That technology was not available to the British until about 1775.


So, what you have is classified as a wedge gunspall and predates that more sophisticated technology. The large bulb of percussion suggests it has been produced by direct percussion from a core, or represents the fat end from a shortish flake off a small core. Note there’s a patch of the original cortex on what remains of the platform, so it has probably been struck from a cobble. If it’s French, the technology dates from between 1650 to 1740 and if British, between 1650 to 1775."

----------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

So, with my friend's info in mind, here are the two main types, gunspall on right, gunflint on left. My source also indicated that care needs to be taken IDing the source of the flint. It's only a general rule that French flint is amber colored; not all of it is. But the prismatic snap blade British gunflints did not start showing up in America much before 1800. It was a secret French technology until the British figured out how the French made gunflints. With all this in mind, this was his conclusion regarding the gunspall my friend found in my field last Sunday:
-----------------------------------------------
"In both France/Britain, the old gunspall technology was still used after 1740/1775 respectively, and the care with which your spall has been trimmed up suggests it’s not from the early period of gunspall technology. It’s not possible to be conclusive about the origin of the flint, other than to say it looks more characteristic of British flint than French flint. In both cases, “characteristic” means the flint type typically used for these items, since flints of all colours were available in both places (and let’s also not forget that the Spanish and Dutch were also big producers, but minor exporters).

The French dominated the export market and were the major suppliers to America until about 1790 when the British began to take over, but snap-blade prismatic gunflints didn’t arrive in America in bulk or overtake gunspalls until the beginning of the 19th Century.


So, in terms of probabilities, I would guess it’s most likely a British import from the early/mid 1700’s to early/mid 1800’s. There’s a lot of conjecture here but without context, probabilities are all we have to go on."
-----------------------------------

Of course, I was hoping for 1600's Contact Era, but no such luck! Note that determining the source of the flint can be tricky! In fact, as stated above, many colors were available in England and France.....

 

[yakker]

Aha <SNAP!> Good info there! I am quite sure every one of my flints is a snap-base gunflint. I want to believe they were used during the Revolutionary War... but I won't be able to say anymore whether they're English or French. I thank you for all that- and the clarification! You've got yourself a fine old piece there- maybe not as old as you were hoping, but older then mine Yakker

 

[Charl]

Aha <SNAP!> Good info there! I am quite sure every one of my flints is a snap-base gunflint. I want to believe they were used during the Revolutionary War... but I won't be able to say anymore whether they're English or French. I thank you for all that- and the clarification! You've got yourself a fine old piece there- maybe not as old as you were hoping, but older then mine Yakker

Yakker, to quote my source further:


"Although the terms gunflint and gunspall are used interchangeably by some folks, the conventional definition is that “gunspall” is reserved for the irregular, teardrop and then scallop shell shaped and thick wedge items, with more extensive edge trimming (unifacial) as time progresses; “gunflint” is reserved for the later prismatically shaped snap-blade items that originated in France around 1740 (as a closely guarded military/commercial secret). That technology was not available to the British until about 1775."
-------------------------------
The French were by far the largest exporters of gunflints to the Americas, and the color you found was their dominant color for sure, exceptions noted. So the odds always favor honey colored being French until the 1800's, when most of the English are grey-black, exceptions noted. And French gunflints were in use here by the later French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. I have a pipe fragment from the site that is 1750-1800. The gunspall might be the same time or later. Your snap blades that are likely French can be as old as the 1740's. So no reason why they can't be Revolutionary War. Point being, mine is not necessarily older and might be younger

 

[GatorBoy]

For comparative purposes mine came from a site that was specifically occupied between the years 1835 and 1842..by the early U.S. military... Here are some pipes from the site..
That was a confusing time however there was trade with the French also Creek Indians that had banded with the British as well as volunteers from different areas were all involved

 

[Charl]

Nice pipes. The kaolin clay pipes, if anyone finds those, very common to find stem fragments, can actually be dated by measuring the stem hole:

"In the 1950s J. C. Harrington studied thousands of pipe stems excavated at Jamestown and other colonial Virginia sites. He noted a definite relationship between the diameter of the bore (the hole through the stem) and the age of the pipe it came from. Essentially, the diameter decreased as the pipes became more recent – possibly because the stem length was gradually increasing.

Louis Binford later devised a mathematical formula to refine Harrington's dating method and this gives the following table (bores are in 64ths of an inch):

9/64 bore dates to 1590-1620
8/64 bore dates to 1620-1650
7/64 bore dates to 1650-1680
6/64 bore dates to 1680-1720
5/64 bore dates to 1720-1750
4/64 bore dates to 1750-1800

The dating technique only definitively applies to pipe stems manufactured in England between about 1590 and 1800 but it might also be a guide for other European pipes."
----------------------------------
By using this formula, I was able to determine a tiny broken bowl-stem section was 1750-1800. Nothing to look at, but I could still date it; it may be a clue as to the age of the gunspall, but I guess a lot more datable evidence would need to come out of the field first.

 

[GatorBoy]

I can see the style bowl that was on that pipe and would say 1700's or earlier.

 

[Charl]

Yeah, I noticed the angle of the bowl when I found it in the field a couple years ago. Knew right away the bowl was at a different angle to the stem then what I usually find. The kaolin pipe below looks like it was used yesterday, but they were still in common use well into the 1920's anyway. But you can use Binford's formula with confidence so long as you have a piece of the stem. When I found the small fragment I naturally wanted it to be 1600's in the worse way, Contact Era, and maybe used by natives on the site. Unfortunately, 1750-1800 is too late for natives here. And I sure could have used a bigger fragment! The bowl shapes, if you find an intact bowl of kaolin, are good clues to age, naturally. To get a good range, if the pipe is pre-1800, just measure the bore hole.....

 

[GatorBoy]

Everything I've read shows that the diameter of the hole is very unreliable.. I believe you have a contact era piece.
I have some where the holes are so inconsistent there's more than one because the first one didn't even connect straight through to the bowl I also have some that popped out of the side of the stem.. I'm not thinking it was done with much precision.
That "formula" was devised by one man..on one site in the 1950's

 

[yakker]

Thank you Charlie- and Gator too- for revealing more good usable information about the materials I've found at this particular site. This is what I do know about it- and had in mind when searching (below). To my understanding there's documentation that proves that he met and exchanged gifts w/ the N.A.'s pretty much right on the spot I hunt (which is now a working fishing boat dock and drop-off, as well as a state park and educational area- and boat-launch for recreational/hunting purposes. So it get a ton of use- and always has. I have found pipe stems there before but no bowls. I too have read that the way to date a pipe was by the bore hole. I never knew the formula, but just by eye-balling it, I could get a rough and very general idea (I never knew the dates associated w/ the bore hole dimension).

Judging from the plate and bowl shards I have found- and with what Gator mentioned in another post, I know this are was active (and an eroding, multi-era dump exists, still washing out right at the put-in) from the early-mid 1700's on. I gave my frame of finds to the good folks that run the park offices (they almost fell over)- where they also do many summer programs for kids of school age. So Charlie- I think you're right. Having thought about it a bit, I'm betting those flints are early- and possibly contact (I can always hope), but surely many of them before the early 1800's-- and that's just assuming I'm right about the other items I've found there. I'll have to take a look and see if I can find my 'junque' boxes (still packed up) with all the bits and pieces of pottery, china/dinnerware, etc.
I wish I'd kept all that stuff separated out so I'd know what was from where- but much of it I think I can still remember (often from the mud-stained patina ) Thanks again guys!! And many thanks to your friend over the pond, Charlie! Yakker

When Captain John Smith explored the Sassafras in 1608, he visited a palisaded Tockwogh village along its banks, possibly at Turner's Creek. The Tockwoghs, and the Ozinies, who lived near present day Rock Hall, were among the Algonquin-speaking peoples of the Peninsula. In addition to living off the abundant natural resources, they had begun to practice agriculture sometime around 800 BC, cultivating the three sisters of Native American farming, corn, beans and squash, along with the crop that would change their destiny: tobacco.

 

[unclemac]

Yeah, I noticed the angle of the bowl when I found it in the field a couple years ago. Knew right away the bowl was at a different angle to the stem then what I usually find. The kaolin pipe below looks like it was used yesterday, but they were still in common use well into the 1920's anyway. But you can use Binford's formula with confidence so long as you have a piece of the stem. When I found the small fragment I naturally wanted it to be 1600's in the worse way, Contact Era, and maybe used by natives on the site. Unfortunately, 1750-1800 is too late for natives here. And I sure could have used a bigger fragment! The bowl shapes, if you find an intact bowl of kaolin, are good clues to age, naturally. To get a good range, if the pipe is pre-1800, just measure the bore hole.....

we need a trade pipe thread....!

 

[yakker]

we need a trade pipe thread....!

Yes we do! Maybe just pipes in general to get a broader audience. If you search the forums, there are a lot of folks posting pipes at one time or another- from various time-periods. They tell/say a lot about the eras and how societies/communities lived. Certainly forum-worthy I think Yakker

 

[1320]

Just rated this thread as excellent! Great initial post, great replies...nice to know that at my age, I can still learn something...lol.