I recently had a chance to attend a Flintknapping class at the Wilderness Way School in Owego, NY. Craig Ratzat was the instructor and owns Neolithics a knapping supply company. Craig is from Oregon, which makes it even more amazing that he would do a school in upstate NY on Flintknapping.
I started knapping 3 years ago after receiving the "Linc" short course on Knapping in the basement at the Martville Bowmaking and Flintknapping School in Martville,NY. I even treked to Western, NY to the Stone tools show at Letchworth State Park in the same year. I met Craig then and purchase a couple hundred pound of material from him then. I told him where I was at in the knapping world. He recomended going to his class in Owego. That was 2006, I said to myself "he's a pretty good salesman, but Linc taught me enough to do this knapping stuff!! ( pretty cockey, Huh!!)
Well when you reduce a couple hundred pound of primo flint, chert, obsidian and dacite to large piles of rubble in short order you get humbled in a hurry!! All this time most of my knapping was using pre-forms, and as I found out ( to my dismay)kind of poorly. Linc had nothing to do with my poor preformance in spalling, it was my cockeyness (I'm 50+ yrs. old you ain't tellin me nothing)! I was still determined, so off to school I went Hi Ho Hi Ho!!!!
But in the fine print it does say " It's okay to hate Craig Ratzat, cause he makes flintknapping so easy"!
The second shows 3 point that I did in class. One isn't completed (larger of the 3). The cuts, the bad language, broken points and the friends that I gained in the 2 day class were worth it. Besides where else can you go and learn knapping with people from 3 countries and 5 states and be so close to home!