Make your own flintlock flint?

[Older The Better]

I ordered a flintlock gun kit and was wondering if all flint works the same. I can get my hands on some low quality stuff for free but I was curious if there was a reason most gunflints were French or English. Anybody have any experience with this?

 

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[ToddsPoint]

Most flints or cherts found in the US are inferior to English or French flint. The best flint I found was the Coshocton from Ohio and also Mill Cr. from So. IL. Others I've tried just didn't produce the sparks. You can test your piece of flint on a steel striker. Your next problem is learning how to chip a gunflint. Not easy until you get the hang of it. Gary

 

[Jon Stewart]

You can buy French or English made gunflints at some knap ins for $2.00 each. A seller at Flintridge had them a couple years ago. Of course unless you are set on making your own.

 

[Older The Better]

I’m decent at making arrowheads, thought it might be fun to make my own flint but I’m not above just getting some. I suspected that there was a reason there’s not a lot of variety in gunflints. Thanks for the info I guess I’ll just have to try and see what works

 

[joshuaream]

I've seen them made. It's really cool to see.

As Gary mentioned, it's not easy until you get the hang of it. The other big problem is it takes material of a certain size to get big bladelets to run true and strait.

You can absolutely make something called a gunspall from spalls/large flakes of material, and trim them down, but the classic gunflint comes from snapping long bladelets. You can get high quality material of that size the UK, France, Denmark, Texas, Belize, and a couple of other places, but it would be a relatively expensive endeavor to master it if you don't have access to cheap material.

There are some great videos on it on Youtube, and some cool articles on jstor for free if you have a gmail account.