After watching the movie “Driven” again, I wanted to remember my childhood and make myself a knife out of stone again. I’ll definitely do this in the near future, but for now a little theory...
These three pictures show the three stages of making a flint knife.
1. Rough processing of a flint workpiece with a stone hammer.
2. Careful finishing of the flake using a softer striker made of bone or antler.
3. Finishing the knife blade using the squeezing method.
Manufacturing materials:
Obsidian- homogeneous volcanic glass that has passed through the rapid cooling of molten rocks. Obsidian can be found in the Aeolian Islands, Iceland, the Caucasus, Siberia and Kamchatka.
Quartz- one of the most common minerals in the earth's crust, the rock-forming mineral of most igneous and metamorphic rocks. 12 percent of the earth's crust is made of quartz. 
Flint- silica concretions (SiO2) in sedimentary rocks. Often colored with oxides of iron and manganese in different colors, with smooth transitions between them
Slates- rocks with a parallel (layered) arrangement of the minerals included in their composition. Shales are characterized by foliation - the ability to easily split into separate plates.
And so let's start, take a suitable stone, it should be one and a half times larger than the planned tool and not have cracks.
Hit the workpiece with a hard, smooth stone to create a flat surface. The blow should be struck at an angle of less than 90°. After a good blow, you should get a flat chip with a cutting edge; if this is enough for us, we can cut, since the edge turns out to be sharp.
If you want to give it a certain shape, then you should take a bone or hard wood and “plane it a little”, the main thing here is to be careful and not to rush into anything.
The handle can be wrapped with available materials (leather, fabric, young bark) or the resulting blade can be secured in wood or bone and wrapped in the same way. You can also put it on glue, I’ll tell you how to make it a little later... 
I want to say that you can’t open a tin can with such a knife, but you can remove a skin, cut a rope, finish off an animal, or if you make a stone axe, you can fell a tree
I hope the material will be useful to someone. I collected pieces from my memory and the Internet helped and advised me with this :)
P.S. Dear, if you are “-”, then write why, just curious
Chapter from the book, Basics of Survival."
Why did the “Stone Age” of Humanity last so long? Yes, because having mastered the most primitive methods of making products from stone (flint), any person could provide himself, anytime and anywhere, with the most necessary tools: a knife, arrowheads and spearheads, axes, scrapers, hand axes, etc. The list of products is small, but for a man of those distant times this was quite enough for life. Products made from flint quickly broke, but it was just as quickly possible to make new products on our own to replace the lost ones. For modern man, such possibilities of his prehistoric ancestor are already in the category of fantasy. The production of the simplest metal products requires, if not the presence of a machine park, then special tools and fairly high qualifications in metalworking. The metal itself also needs to be obtained somehow.
I have a feeling that someone will ask: “Why does a person of the twenty-first century need Stone Age technologies? Why does modern man need some kind of stone tips for arrows and spears?” These fans of specific questions already know the answers to all their questions in advance. For example, in their opinion, televisions are needed only for broadcasting and viewing porn, printed publications are needed for the dissemination of extremist views and dirty lust. They can also tell in detail about the main purpose of table forks, corkscrews, meat grinders, electric kettles, irons and freezers. How many people have already died unable to withstand torture with these tools? And here the author offers technologies for the production of alternative weapons.
Well what can I say? Some people, trying to understand the world around them, seek adventures in wild lands, in the middle of nowhere. Other people have adventures in their own homes. In both cases there is sometimes a need to arm oneself at least at the Stone Age level. Because with the acquisition of modern firearms, even more hassle appears. Let's remember how airplanes fly today. No sooner had I entered the storage room after registration than the command immediately sounded: “Take off your shoes, pull out the belts from your trousers, take out all metal objects, unbutton your pants and bras, put your hands behind your head, face the wall or the back of another passenger’s head!” And just like that, under the watchful and attentive gaze of well-trained flight attendants and, most likely, at the gunpoint of invisible snipers, a chain of passengers boards the plane. Well, it’s clear that on the plane some idiots suddenly have something going on and they start pumping up their license, remembering that they themselves were people too, twice as many times and demanding justice. Other passengers who are so violent immediately begin to calm them down by saying that they dreamed about it and that a modern citizen always has bare feet, his fly and bra are unbuttoned, he is never right, especially without having a license!
And you want to say that in such conditions an extreme tourist can carry a legal barrel with cartridges, gunpowder and other ammunition to the middle of nowhere? You may be able to take it there, but don’t forget that your registered weapon still needs to be taken back. And there the local official will take an eye on your gun and tell you what is not allowed. In his own words, he will explain that you can write a complaint to him and about him, but in green ink, with a red seal and in triplicate, otherwise he will not even consider your accusations... The owners of the trunks and the house may have problems. Without a gun in the safe, the owner could sleep peacefully, but then in the middle of the night or early in the morning there is a sudden check. The policeman said: “I don’t drink this and I don’t snack on this, but you can try this. I won’t look at the safe today, I’m writing that the storage is satisfactory,” maybe it won’t stay in your apartment for long. What if he also has to appear before his superiors in the morning.
I hope it’s now clear why an ordinary citizen would need to know, just in case, the technology for making a stone ax and a wooden fork?
While studying ancient flint processing technologies in theory and practice, I encountered a paradoxical situation. Judging by scientific sources, in the Old World and in Russia in particular, it is believed that the technology for making ancient flint products is an unusually complex and lengthy problem. Moreover, it is poorly studied and controversial, accessible only to a narrow circle of especially dedicated specialists from experimental archeology. There were even reasonable assumptions, for example, that in ancient times the grandfather began to create a stone ax, and the grandson finished it. The most that European scientists have achieved in experimental archeology is to create replicas of the crude axes of the times of Pithecanthropus. At the same time, in North America, making products from flint and using ancient technologies is common practice for making antique souvenirs by local artisans. I want to say that scientists from archeology from different continents apparently have no connection with each other and each has their own, purely personal opinion about the World History of Humanity.
The level of skill of an ordinary craftsman in flint processing from the North American states or Canada has reached such unprecedented heights that the ancient ancestors of today’s Humanity could not even dream of it. And this goes without saying without the use of modern special equipment (laser, vibration or ultrasonic machines...). Everything is done according to ancient technology, where the craftsman’s main tools include a cobblestone and a piece of deer antler for finishing the product. At most, a particularly advanced master can afford to replace ancient materials with modern ones on his instruments. Instead of a cobblestone there is a copper striker, instead of a finely sharpened deer antler squeezer there is something like a tiny screwdriver on a comfortable handle. And everything else is like the ancient masters.
Now a little more about flints. What is it and where can I get it? Flint is one of the most common minerals on Earth. The sand underfoot is mostly finely ground flint. Although it seems that this sand is eternal, it is not. Under the influence of the external environment, sand can dissolve, sinter and flow like a liquid, flowing into random, natural cavities to form flint nodules. For greater clarity, let’s take ordinary window glass. If you measure the thickness of old glass with a regular caliper, you can find a significant difference in size. The glass will be thicker at the bottom. Glass is also made of quartz, only because of the additives it is less hard and less refractory. It also flows, but we don’t have time to notice it with the naked eye in such a short time as our life..
Flint nodules can be the size of a tiny pea to the size of a small peasant hut. The deposition of flint on the walls of cavities lasts for thousands and even millions of years, and quartz crystals often form inside the nodules from the amorphous form of layered flint. Silicon stone is tiny crystals of quartz framed by amorphous flint, and in a purely crystalline form is called quartz. Depending on the impurities, quartz crystals can be called by all sorts of names, but most often they are colorless rock crystal druses. The silicon itself in the nodules can also contain impurities and have different colors and slightly different properties. Another option for the formation of flint nodules from melt in volcanoes. There, the nodules are mainly composed of a crystalline form of quartz. Inside volcanic nodules there may also be cavities with individual crystals. Ordinary flint has a glassy sheen when fractured and thin plates can be seen through. Quartz can be translucent or transparent, depending on the type, color and other advantages, it can belong to the group of semi-precious stones. There are also precious forms of quartz.
The nodules are destroyed over time, the fragments are rolled around by water flows and again acquire a rounded shape. Unlike rounded fragments, nodules are usually covered with a rather weak and loose, so-called jacket. If the hardness of the flint itself (and quartz) on the Mohs scale is 7, it scratches glass and hardened steel, then the shirt has a hardness of 3-4 or less. When processing flint, it is necessary to get rid of the jacket and take into account the natural layering.
Flints have one more feature. There is always water present in flints. On stones that have lain in the open air for a long time, moisture evaporates and at the same time tears the integrity of the stone, covering the entire volume of flint with small cracks. Processing such flint is difficult, or rather impossible, since the overdried stone chips not in layers, but along internal cracks and in any direction. Therefore, it is necessary to store flints for subsequent processing in moist soil or water. Sometimes raw (fresh) flints are specially heated in the ashes of fires so that the stones are stratified into long and thin plates. It is clear that fragments of small flint nodules will be stratified into many curved plates, while fragments of large flint nodules may turn out to be almost straight.
When making stone products for practical purposes, we must not forget that these products are mostly disposable and will not last long. Therefore, it is simply not wise to be especially diligent and waste time on production. Any (stone) product must be made quickly, with sufficient accuracy, but nothing more. Other types of stones, crystalline sandstones, hard varieties of slates, obsidian volcanic glass, as well as display, window and bottle glass can be used to make practical products.
The photo shows replicas of antique products. And if we speak in Russian, then antique flint products created by modern craftsmen.
Continued in
Let’s just say that a knife is an extremely necessary thing, and if it so happens that you find yourself alone with nature, you don’t have a knife, but there’s nowhere to go without it! Take advantage of the experience of our ancestors and try to make a knife from stone.
In theory, everything is quite simple, you need to find a suitable stone and process it so that it has a cutting surface.
To do this, the stone needs to be split into plates and sharpened if necessary. As tools for making and sharpening, you can use another stone, bone, animal horn, and anything else that can be used to give our knife the desired shape and sharpness; in this sense, it would be a good idea to practice in advance.
For manufacturing, it is best to use stones of the following types:
Slates- various rocks with a parallel (layered) arrangement of intergrowths of low- or medium-temperature minerals. Shales are characterized by foliation - the ability to easily split into separate plates. They belong to terrigenous or metamorphic rocks.
Flint- a mineral formation consisting of crystalline and amorphous silica (SiO 2) in sedimentary rocks. Often colored with oxides of iron and manganese in different colors, with smooth transitions between them.
In ancient times, flint fragments were used to strike fire, make weapons and household items (arrowheads, flint knives, etc.) In the Middle Ages, flint was widely used to create fire by striking sparks onto tinder using two pieces of flint, or one flint and a piece of other material (flint-pyrite, flint-steel). Later it was used in weaponry in wheel and percussion flintlocks.
Quartz- one of the most common minerals in the earth's crust, the rock-forming mineral of most igneous and metamorphic rocks.
Obsidian- igneous rock consisting of volcanic glass with a water content of no more than 1%, homogeneous volcanic glass that has passed through the rapid cooling of molten rocks. Volcanic glasses richer in water, which swell when heated, are classified as perlites.
You can make your knife a wooden handle (by tying the blade to the wood with string) or use it as such. The undoubted advantage of a stone knife is its sharpness; it is also not susceptible to corrosion, but in terms of strength it is not very strong; it can break from a fall or blow.
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How to make a stone knife yourself at home. A technique for making a knife from stone with your own hands. Stone Age knives in modern conditions
Stone Age knives were silicon or obsilian plates, slightly curved along their entire length (rarely straight) with a small “sharpened point”, and they almost never looked like knives in the modern sense - just oblong plates of various shapes.
Materials for making a stone knife:
Obsidian is a homogeneous volcanic glass that has passed through the rapid cooling of molten rocks. Obsidian can be found in the Aeolian Islands, Iceland, the Caucasus, Siberia and Kamchatka.
Quartz is one of the most common minerals in the earth's crust, the rock-forming mineral of most igneous and metamorphic rocks. 12 percent of the earth's crust is made of quartz.
Flint is a nodule of silica (SiO2) in sedimentary rocks. Often colored with oxides of iron and manganese in different colors, with smooth transitions between them
Shales are rocks with a parallel (layered) arrangement of the minerals that make up their composition. Shales are characterized by foliation - the ability to easily split into separate plates.
And so let's start, take a suitable stone, it should be one and a half times larger than the planned tool and not have cracks.
Hit the workpiece with a hard, smooth stone to create a flat surface. The blow should be struck at an angle of less than 90°. After a good blow, you should get a flat chip with a cutting edge; if this is enough for us, we can cut, since the edge turns out to be sharp.
If you want to give it a certain shape, then you should take a bone or hard wood and “plane it a little”, the main thing here is to be careful and not to rush into anything.
The handle can be wrapped with available materials (leather, fabric, young bark) or the resulting blade can be secured in wood or bone and wrapped in the same way
This is how stone knives are usually made in the wild. At home, you can chip off the edges of a stone blank with a small hammer. It is best to place the stone blank itself on a stable workbench or table, where you first place a piece of thick felt. On felt, the stone will not vibrate from hammer blows. The impacts themselves will be absorbed and the likelihood of unwanted stone splitting will become much less.
The blade can be fine-tuned using pliers - carefully chipping and pinching small pieces from the working edge. It is best to attach the blade to the handle with epoxy resins, which can be stylized on top by masking them with strips of rawhide.
The advantages of a stone knife are that it is a very sharp weapon that is not afraid of corrosion and does not require sharpening. Disadvantages - fragility, afraid of falls and sharp blows, which can cause them to crack
Knives, spears and arrows fall under the category of bladed weapons. First, we will learn how to make the most necessary type of weapon for survival - a knife. The knife performs three main functions. A knife can be used to pierce, hem, or chop and cut. A knife is also an invaluable tool for crafting other gear for your survival. You may find yourself in an emergency without a knife, or you may need another type of knife or spear, so you can improvise and use stone, bone, wood, metal or other suitable material to make the blade of a knife or spear.
STONE KNIFE
To make a stone knife you need a sharp piece of stone, a striking tool and a peeling tool. A hammer is a blunt-edged tool used to break small pieces of stone. A flake tool is a sharp tool used to separate thin, flat pieces of stone. You can make a chipping tool from wood, bone, or metal, and a flaying tool from bone, antler, or soft iron.
To make a roughing knife into the desired shape from a sharp piece of stone (obsidian, quartz, flint or slate), use a hammer. Try to make the knife quite thin. Then, using a peeling tool, carefully work around the edges. This action will cause the “flakes” to come off on the opposite side of the edge, leaving behind a razor sharp edge. Use the tool to peel along the entire length of the edge of the future knife. In the end, you will have a very sharp cutting edge that can be used as a knife. All that remains is to attach the resulting blade to the desired type of handle or simply make a handle by winding rope or other suitable material.
The stone can make an excellent piercing and chopping tool, but it is difficult to get a good edge for cutting. Although, some stones, such as flint, can have very thin edges. In the next post in this series we will make a knife from bone and wood.
Do stone choppers man learned more than 4 million years ago. Archaeologists very often find arrowheads, knives and axes that are made of stone. And if in those distant times it was an important part of everyday life. And the future of an individual family or even an entire tribe depended on how well it was done.
Different materials were used for handaxes, but most often they were made of silicon.
Nowadays, this art has been almost completely forgotten and not many people can make stone axes. However, there are clubs and groups where like-minded people who are interested in archeology gather and try to restore this whole process, and there are even courses where, for a fee, they can teach how to make a stone handaxe.
It's quite funny to watch a group of people sitting and grinding stones on their knees. They are so passionate and completely immersed in this activity that they can spend the whole day doing it, because without the proper skill it is quite difficult to make a stone ax.
In words, it would seem that everything is quite simple. You just need to break off a piece of the required size with a strong blow of stone against stone and you’re done. But no, you have to, as they say, sweat and it takes a lot of time.
How to make a stone chopper
In order to do stone chopper, first of all, you need to prepare the necessary tools.
Since in those distant times people were not at all spoiled by convenient and reliable tools, in order to fully understand and experience the entire process of making a handaxe, we will use “non-prohibited” equipment.
If it does come to training and you try to make a copy of an ancient ax out of stone, then be sure to use protective equipment such as goggles and gloves.
Small fragments can get into your eyes and the sharp edges of the stone can cut you.
As in any business, you first need to select the right size stone, which we will process.
Therefore, by striking stone against stone, you can give it the desired shape that you like.
After all, a chopper is an individual tool that belonged to one owner. And by processing it by hand, the chopper subsequently acquired a shape such that the stone sat comfortably and securely in the hand.
Thus, our instrument gradually begins to take shape.
The edges need to be given a pointed shape, there is no need to strive for perfect “sharpening” now, this will be the next step. Now you just need to shape and roughly shape the hand stone ax
After the hand ax has been formed, you can begin to “sharpen it” and finely craft it.
In those distant times there were no tools, so processing was carried out with improvised means.
One of these tools was deer antlers, which were left in abundance after a successful hunt.
They are soft and durable and very convenient to bring to perfection.
With strong and precise blows you can “sharpen” the edges. If earlier, by striking stone against stone, large pieces were broken off and given shape, now small areas are removed and the future ax can be processed more accurately.
It was in this way that our ancestors created the main tool of labor and hunting - a stone hand ax.
