38 Dr Mitchell on the Manufacture of Gun- Flints. 



The art of making gun-flints appears to be very simple, yet I 

 was informed at Brandon, that it is not more than forty years 

 since the present mode was known there, being introduced from 

 France. The origin of the art is kept in recollection by its 

 being called the French mode, as distinguished from the mode 

 formerly in use, which they called the English mode. One of 

 the men in a shop which I visited recollected the time when it was 

 first made known. According to what is called the English mode, 

 pieces were struck off the edges of a block of flint, and when it 

 happened that they were of such a form as would answer, the 

 edges on the sides were broken off, and they were brought into 

 Some shape. Such flints were unshapely in comparison of the pre- 

 sent very elegant form of gun-flints; there was a great waste of ma- 

 terial, and only a small number could be made in a given time. 

 Accordingly this mode was soon totally abandoned when the 

 French mode was once known. * 



This mode I shall now attempt to describe. The work- 

 man, technically called a cracker, who is seated on a chair, has 

 a thick piece of leather strapped to his left thigh ; and over 

 that piece of leather he straps on a thick piece of iron. He 

 takes a large piece of flint-stone, and breaks it into pieces of 

 manageable size about two pounds each : he then takes one piece 

 in his left hand, and applying it to the plate of iron on his thigh, 

 he strikes out fragments at short distances from each other : he 

 then strikes with his hammer on the parts of the edge of the 

 flint, which are now separated from the rest, and the effect of the 

 blow, together with the reaction on the plate of iron on his thigh, 

 causes a flake of about three or four inches in length to come 

 off, there being on each side a conchoidal fracture. Other 

 flakes are broken off in the same manner. Of the flakes thus 

 obtained from the mass of flint, some are large and others small. 

 The workman has before him three small casks with the upper 

 end open ; into one of them he drops the larger flakes ; into the 

 second the flakes of a less size ; and into the third the flakes of 

 the smallest size. When he has broken off so many flakes that 



* Mr Jeremiah Simmonds has informed me, that the first man who in- 

 troduced the French mode into England was his own grandfather Mr James 

 Woodyer, who resided at Kingsdown, between Maidstone and London. He 

 has been dead now more than fifty years. It is probable that the French mode 

 was not introduced at Brandon until some time after it was in use in Kent. 



