Tools Of The Trade

I'm a traditional self taught knapper and use a combination of stone, bone, antler and copper tools.  A wide variety of the material I use comes from sources that I have found over many years and miles of exploring this vast region. 

Traditional flintknapping relies heavily on percussion flaking for reducing natural stone into useful bi-faces and preforms. Pressure flaking is then used to complete the process.

Lapidary knapping uses modern tools such as slab saws, trim saws, and diamond grinders to produce perfect preforms, almost entirely eliminating percussion flaking.  Lapidary knapping relies heavily on the process of pressure flaking, often referred to as flake over grind.  Most of the larger artistic knife blades are now made using this method. 

Below is a picture of some of my more traditional tools that I use.  Notice the grooves in the sandstone abraders used in platform preparation.  I used to discard these, but now I save them.

Here is a variety of late stage 100%  percussioned preforms from various raw materials