blade material choice

[banoch]

The problem is that being new to all of this I have absolutly nothing of interest to trade except for a little $.

[leapingbare]

I think stone knifes were carried for self defense as a last resort.. it would be much more practical to use blades and flacks for cutting and carving.. sure you can gut a deer with a well made stone knife.. but its much easier to do it with a flack off a blade core.  just my 2 cents.

[Jaeger]

a flake is as sharp as it ever will get to retouch it just dulls it ,or so it sayes in waldorfs book.

[sailordad]

ive got scars on two of my fingerprint pads from flakes
damn near cut both of them right of the finger
happened in less than a blink of an eye too

they cut soo clean ya can bleed for two days before it quits,then ya bump it and it starts all over again with the bleeding

[mullet]

 Brian Melton knocked off a flake of that Florida Chert, Hillbilly once called concrete. And then commenced to skinning a boar hog with no trouble at all. Anybody that has experiance skinning a wild hog knows how you have to keep resharpening your knife.

[Bill Skinner]

Pedernales or flint.   I agree with Leapingbear, they carried a stone knife in case they needed to cut something.  If they expected to cut something, they carried flakes or spalls or something they could get flakes from.  Bill

[banoch]

OK, I found some rhyolite but the guy says that it is "mid grade" What does this mean other than it is not high or low grade? He is asking $2 lb.

[Hillbilly]

Banoch, where is the rhyolite from? In NC, it ranges from a very good grade comparable in knappability to raw chert to a grainy, granite-like rock that's almost unknappable. The best stuff is green or gray.