John Lord flint knapping

[calgarychef]

Well I hate to brag but I will anyway!  I spent a most enjoyable day with John Lord doing some flint knapping.

 I'd hear about John when I was a wee sprat and when I learned we were moving to the UK I decided a session with him would be one of the first things on my bucket list.  Well I've been twice and the second time things really started to make a lot more sense.  I came home with as much Brandon flint as my car could carry and John wouldn't let me pay him a cent for it.

It's nice to get together with someone who is so humble yet one of the very best in the world at what he does. And his wife Val is very knowlegable about traditional uses of fibers.  we spent time knapping and "spinning yarns."

[tishtail]

i've wanted to try flint knapping for sometime sense it sounds like john is over sea and he's very good at what he does how can i find out more about him and how he's different from others does he have a web-site for some training i can use. thanks LjT

[calgarychef]

John does have a web site but it doesn't tell much about knapping. He's got a book and video but I haven't watched it so can't comment. His fame is more from the idea of practical archaeology and he participated in the origional dig at Lynford.  Where a paleolithic mammoth kill site was found.  

John does a great reproduction of the hand axes found on the site and he uses the large hand axes to illustrate knapping technique.  All the flakes that occur in knapping are the same.  They start out with a conical fracture which forces the flake off the main piece.  Whether it's a large flake or small they don't differ in that way.  So learning by doing a hand ax first really helps to see what's happening, simply because the flakes are larger and easier to see.  And knocking off great big flakes is fun!

There are great videos on u-tube and I've watched tons of them but they still aren't the same as doing it with someone looking over your shoulder.

The States have lots of good knappers who do training seminars, you just have to find one.  The hard part is getting good flint.  Here it's everywhere but the very best is known as "Brandon" flint and it's jet black and wonderful to work with.  It also makes the best gunflints and the houses in Brandon are actually made with flint cores left over from the gunflint making trade.  Pretty cool stuff.  

Today I made a huge arrowhead, more of a wall hanger or large atlatl point.  I was able to make it out of a piece of flint that I had tossed aside as "unworkable" but with my new knowlege from John I was able to rework it and produce something nice.