FLINT , 459 



1. He breaks the block. Being seated upon the ground, he places the nodule of flint 

 on his left thigh, and applies slight strokes with the square hammer to divide it into 

 smaller pieces of about a pound and a half each, with broad surfaces and almost even 

 fractures. The blows should bo moderate, lest the lump crack and split in the wrong 

 direction. 



2. He cleaves or chips the flint. The principal point is to split the flint well, or to 

 chip off scales of the length, thickness, and shape adapted for the subsequent formatiou 

 of gun-flints. Here the greatest dexterity and steadiness of manipulation are necessary ; 

 but the fracture of the flint is not restricted to any particular direction, for it may bo 

 chipped in all parts with equal facility. 



The workman holds the lump of flint in his left hand, and strikes with the pointed 

 hammer upon the edges of the great planes produced by the first breaking, whereby 

 tho white coating of the flint is removed in small scales, and the interior body of the 

 flint is laid bare ; after which he continues to detach similar scaly portions from the 

 clean mass. 



These scaly portions are nearly 1 in. broad, 2 in. long, and th of an inch thick 

 in the middle. They are slightly convex below, and consequently leave in the part 

 of the lump from which they were separated a space slightly concave, longitudinally 

 bordered by two somewhat projecting straight lines or ridges. The ridges produced 

 by the separation of the first scales must naturally constitute nearly the middle of the 

 subsequent pieces ; and such scales alone as have their ridges thus placed in the middle 

 are fit to be made into gun-flints. In this manner the workman continues to split or 

 chip the mass of flint in various directions, until the defects usually found in the 

 interior render it impossible to make the requisite fractures, or until the piece is too 

 much reduced to sustain the smart blows by which the flint is divided. 



3. He fashions the gun-flints. Five different parts may be distinguished in a gun- 

 flint : 1. The sloping facet or bevel part, which is impelled against the hammer of 

 the lock. Its thickness should be from two to three twelfths of an inch ; for if it 

 were thicker it would be too liable to break ; and if more obtuse, the scintillations 

 would be less vivid. 2. The sides or lateral edges, \hich are always somewhat 

 irregular. 3. The back or thick part opposite the tapering edge. 4. The under 

 surface, which is smooth and rather concave. And, 5. The upper face which has a 

 small square plane between the tapering edge and the back for entering into the upper 

 claw of the lock. 



In order to fashion the flint, those scales are selected which have at least one of the 

 above-mentioned longitudinal ridges ; the workman fixes on one of the two tapering 

 borders to form the striking edge, after which the two sides of the stone that are to 

 form the lateral edges, as well as the part that is to form the back, are successively 

 placed on the edge of the chisel in such a manner that the convex surface of the 

 flint, which rests on the forefinger of the left hand, is turned towards that tool. 

 Then with the disc hammer he applies some slight strokes to the flint just opposite 

 the edge of the chisel underneath, and thereby breaks it exactly along the edge of the 

 chisel. 



4. The finishing operation is the trimming, or the process of giving the flint a smooth 

 and equal edge ; this is done by turning up the stone and placing the edge of its 

 tapering end upon the chisel, in which position it is completed by five or six slight 

 strokes of the disc hammer. The whole operation of making a gun-flint, to describe 

 which so many words are here used, is performed in less than one minute. A good work- 

 man is able to manufacture 1,000 good chips or scales in a day (if the flint balls be 

 of good quality) ; or ,500 gun-flints. Hence, in the space of three days, he can easily 

 cleave and finish 1,000 gun-flints without any assistance. 



The manufacture of gun-flints is still carried on to a limited extent at Brandon, in 

 Suffolk, where the trade has been established for several centuries. In 1870 there 

 were three masters and thirty workmen engaged in flint- working at Brandon. 



An excellent paper on flimVknapping by Mr. J. Wyatt of Bedford, is published in 

 Stevens's 'Flint Chips' (1870). A description of the processes still in use is also 

 given in Evans's ' Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great 

 Britain ' (1872). 



The facility with which flint, in spite of its hardness, may, with sufficient practice, 

 be fractured in almost any given direction, yielding fragments with sharp-cutting 

 edges, has led to its employment as one of the commonest materials of those rude stone 

 implements which have in all ages been fashioned by savage tribes ignorant of the use 

 of metal. The antiquary has long been familiar with the occurrence of such imple- 

 ments, in tumuli or ancient burial-mounds ; and of late years they have also been 

 found in the Pfahlbauten or pile-dwellings in the Swiss lakes ; in the Kjokkenmod- 

 dings or Danish shell-mounds; in bone-caverns, &c. The -worked flints found in 

 these situations are referred, in most cases, to an early pre-historic period known to 



