can a obsidian or flint arrow head shave hair?

[Justin Falon]

Can a flint or obsidian arrow point shave hair from your arm?

[Spectre]

Stone is the sharpest thing in the world. One can knap it down to 1 molecule thickness---I ran into a cat that knaps custom surgical instruments for plastic surgeons---they like them because they are so sharp they don't leave a scar.
 So yes, I reckon a guy could shave with it.

[Justin Falon]

interesting.  I will probably not hunt with stone points, but have wondered about this for a while.  Thank you.

[Shedrock]

I would hunt with stone points, but Wyoming doesn't allow it.   :(

Sam Fadala wrote an article years ago on the subject. I believe it was proven that an obsidian flake was 100 times sharper than a scalpel.

[KentuckyWolf]

YES! see Spectre's comment. Obsidian can be SCARY sharp....way sharper than you could ever get steel.

[getstonedprimitivebowhunt]

I have killed 6 deer now with stone very cleanly...so Yes they kill.. I bet more than any other head in history...hmmmm!

[ChuckC]

A flake is razor sharp...  A broadhead is NOT a flake. Yes... you could get them sharp, but stop referring to the use in surgeries cause you will never see a surgeon using a stone broadhead.

Purchase the finest stone head you can find and slice a piece of leather with it or maybe cut a raw piece of roast.  Then do the same with a very sharp steel broadhead.  You will see the difference.
ChuckC

[getstonedprimitivebowhunt]

...I used one once to get out a very painful ...apple thorn...  

[vermonster13]

ChuckC, several surgeons on here have used stone heads. Tippet comes to mind.

[wv lungbuster]

I ran into a cat that knaps custom surgical instruments for plastic surgeons---they like them because they are so sharp they don't leave a scar.
   :eek:    :eek:    

[fido dog]

None of my points will shave hair. They might rip it, but not shave and they are (hunting with stone) sharp. The flakes that come off the rock are extremely sharp and yes will shave.

Unfortunately you don't hunt with flakes.........unless you're hunting with me.    :rolleyes:

[eric101]

I'm also a knapper and flint or obsidian rather is used in surgeries and flint can be sharpened to be very dangerous to handle carelessly.Flint will cause bleeding to last a lot longer than steel bh's i know i have the scares to prove it.To find the difference in flint and steel don't slice anything your not running up and slashing the animal,you are shooting a projectile at it shoot a steel point and a flint point at a piece of leather or a roast to see a real comparison of the two.Now you want a good test take a steel knife and a flint knife and cut a tine off an old rack and see which one will and which one will not do this.My 2 cents worth.

[knife river]

The "surgeons use obsidian" story has been repeated so many times it's become apocryphal.  I know that years ago some plastic surgeons experimented with obsidian scalpels but decided not to use them on a regular basis.  The obsidian was so sharp that they couldn't feel how deep they were cutting.  They went back to steel because of the "push back" from tissue.

There have been a couple heart surgeries done with flint or obsidian at the request of the knapper undergoing surgery.  Don Crabtree is probably the best known of them (although he died in 1980).

Do any surgeons currently use flint/obsidian on a regular basis?  I don't know of any.  If anyone does, I'd love to hear the details and even speak with the surgeon.

To answer Warrior's original question, though, the answer is "it depends."  If you're talking about a bifacially knapped broadhead, then no, it won't shave hair.  It's still crazy sharp, but the hundreds of flake removals along the edge don't form a continuous line.  This style of broadhead is what we envision when the term "flint point" is used.

On the other hand, if you're talking about a broadhead made like some used in Europe's neolithic where flake blades were inset in a foreshaft, then yes, they'll shave hair.  They'll cut the bejeebers out of you if you just look at them hard.  I know that James Parker made a three blade broadhead using flake blades inset in a piece of antler, but I don't know if he hunted with it.

Sorry to get long-winded.  Interesting question!

[Izzy]

Ill tell you what Woody, I used a big flake of the knife river flint you left at Rays and all I can say is you gotta see to believe what it can do for skinning a hog.Very, very imprssive!

[McDave]

I have ordered several obsidian knives from several different people, primarily as decorations for my office.  None of the blades are very sharp.  I guess it really doesn't matter since they probably won't be used for anything other than decorations, but I'm kind of disappointed because I hoped they would be sharper than they are.  Do people who make these obsidian knives purposely leave them a little dull, or is that just the way they turn out?

[ChuckC]

Again. . .  a flake is not the same as a broadhead.  Yes you can kill animals with them (a broadhead).  No I am not saying don't use them.  But understand that it is not the same thing.  No surgeon is gonna use a stone broadhead as a scalpel. (Vermonster  I didn't say it well above but corrected it here.)

A flake will typically shine as a knife blade but will generally not hold up to impacts as a bifacial broadhead.  Heck some broadheads were single bevel and were shaped very similar to what we use for wood chisels.  

ChuckC

[knife river]

Izzy, we tried the flakes, too.  Yep, they worked well, but the flint corner tang knife I left there worked even better.  I think we processed three or four hogs and it never slowed down.  I saw one nick out of the edge where I twisted it inside a joint.  Flint doesn't bend too well.      

On soft tissue, flint/chert/obsidian is pretty amazing.  It's brittle nature, though, is something to be aware of.  That what's makes it knappable, but also makes it vulnerable to damage from hard stuff.  Can't have one without the other, I guess.  At the same time, I've put stone and glass points through hog ribs, shields, and femurs and hardly saw any damage at all to the points.  I spined a hog once, though, and the point really blew up.  Killed the hog plenty dead, though...

McDave, about all I can say is that all knives are not created equal.  There are several factors at play, like edge angle, type and quality of edge retouch, and size of the flakes.

[mallard_drake85]

obsidian and flint will shave. As a knapper, when you hit the platform of your biface and create the cone, then shards are flying off extremely fast, normally fast enough that when they stick into your skin you really don't realize that you've been stuck until the stone you've been working with becomes sticky (from the blood). And as stated, they will bleed for a long time because of how cleanly they cut. You really dont want to risk shaving with fint (or obsidian) as you run the risk of damaging cells with even realizing what you've done!

[Pat B]

Usually a stone blade or point doesn't feel sharp because the edge is not a continuous edge like Knife River suggested. If you feel down in the flake scars you will feel their sharpness.
 I saw the micro blade point James Parker made. It had 5 micro blades mounted along an antler tip like the old Satellite replaceable blade points. He did shoot a doe with this point and it penetrated the scapula and killed the deer. When he recovered the head it still had 3 micro blades still attached.

[pete p]

i have been interested in stone heads for a few yrs now, some of them are real works of art. my worry would be if i had poor placement...like a shoulder shot. would a stone point even make it through a rib??