I live just south of Jojo and have been trying to teach myself too. My advice is to find a glass bottle recycle bin and practice on the bottoms of those bottles. It is like learning to golf. You hit a hundred worm burners, and then have one hit that sails perfect down the fairway. Then you see why people keep trying. With knapping, you make a lot of debris and some really ugly points, but then one flake will run like it is supposed to, and then you will have one whole point that doesn't totally suck, and so forth. Maybe you, me and Joe can get together sometime and all look horrible together.