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Kids, please don't try this at home without your parents' permission! Observe all safety precautions, as cuts or eye damage can occur. Be careful. Outdoor Wonders accepts no liability for your mistakes.

 

The process for turning stone into an arrowhead or blade is called knapping. The resulting arrowhead or blade is sometimes called a point. 

Many materials can be knapped into points, including, but not limited to felsite, argillite, glass, flint, chert, jasper, petrified wood or obidian. These materials all have a common characteristic in the way that they break when pressure is applied to them. This is called conchoidal fracture. When they are struck, the piece that comes off is shaped like a shallow cone or clam shell. 

Knappers, people who make points, take advantage of this property to work the stone into a point. To make a point, you'll need:

 

· Safety glasses

· Leather gloves

· A few pieces of leather, roughly 5" square at least

· Brass welding or copper rod, at least 1/8" thick, preferably thicker, and 3" long

· Hardwood dowel, at least 5/8" diameter

· A fist sized stone, round or oblong

· Knappable material such as stone or glass

 

You may want:

Deer antler sheds with tines (points,) if available
Moose antler sheds, if available

The safety glasses are self-explanatory. You only get one set of eyes. Use caution if attempting this. Glass or stone shards can cause cuts and even blindness. The leather is used to hold the obsidian. 

Tools to make:

Flaking Tool - The flaking tool is used for the fine work of chipping small pieces off of a stone flake to make your point. Brass rod and a dowel can be used to make your flaking tool. To do this, drill a hole into one end of the hardwood dowel. the hole should be the diameter of the brass or copper rod you intend to use. Cut a 1 1/2" piece of brass or copper rod and insert it into the hole drilled into the hardwood rod. Glue the rod in place. The resulting tool will look like a blunt, brass pencil. A point can be fashioned on the brass rod if you'd like. The tool is shown in the picture above.

Flaking Tools can also be made from the tines (points) of the deer antler or from sharpened bone. Use them as is.

Billet - The moose antler is used to make a tool called a billet. The billet is used like a hammer. Strike the billet against the stone to split pieces (called flakes or blanks) off of the larger chunks (called spalls or cobbles.) In lieu of moose antler, a round or oblong stone (called a hammer stone) can be used. The billet or hammer stone can be used to roughly shape the flake into a point before using the flaking tool.

You may find antlers (called sheds) in the woods. They are dropped annually by the deer or moose as part of a natural cycle in the animal's life. To make a billet, use the area that attaches to the moose's head for the billet.

The technique for splitting flakes off of spalls is to hit the spall with a billet or hammer stone with a glancing blow to knock off a conchoidal-shaped piece called a flake. Find a "lip" or part that sticks out off of the spall and hit that area with a downward-inward blow. Keep your hands above not below the part that you want to shear off the spall.

Stones like obsidian are extremely sharp when flaked. Please do be careful and have fun!

For more detail, search the web for knapping or flint knapping. If you do decide to try it, be sure to observe the proper safety procedures noted!

Making Arrow Heads (Stone Knapping)

An example made from a glass bottle!

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