Our Flintknapping Beginnings
Having grown up in the same small town in rural south-western West Virginia, we have been friends since starting elementary school together nearly 40 years ago. It just so happens that the town where we grew up is situated along the Kanawha River; a major tributary to the Ohio River and an ideal location for early Native American settlements; so we were finding, playing with, collecting, and trading ancient points well before we fully understood their value and historical significance. As teenagers, arrowhead and artifact collecting had become an almost daily obsession and we would spend every hour possible, walking plowed fields, construction sites, gardens and river banks looking for the elusive "perfect point". Even at that time, we would both look at these small seemingly simple works of art and wondered "How did they make these things?"
Fast forward 30 years. We still live in south-western West Virginia, have remained best friends, and are still looking for that "perfect point". However, in December of 2007 we finally had the opportunity to find the answer to the question "How did they make these things?" Still considered as the best Christmas present ever, and quite literally the gift that keeps on giving, we both acquired a basic flint-knapping kit off of the internet and made our first attempt at flint-knapping on January 1st, 2008 - and have been knapping ever since.
After years of trial-and-error knapping, attendance at several knap-ins, and advice and technical assistance from some of the true masters of this art, we definitely feel that we have made a great deal of progress and are steadily seeing our persistence pay off as our skills improve. Consequently, while we have found the answer to our initial question of "How did they make these things?".The bonus plan is that, by answering this question, we have stumbled onto an endless array of follow-up questions that we will be putting our blood, sweat and tears (literally) into trying to answer for the rest of our lives.
