How to Find Chert/Flint, Finding Chert
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- Finding chert/flint down by the creek bed for flint and steel. How to easily find chert for beginners. I am not an expert so feel free to comment down below with the actual scientific names of the rock.
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I've been wanting to put together my own fire kit with flint and steel. Now I feel encouraged to go try to find my own chert. Thanks for the video!
Absolutely! Give it a try Keith. You can definitely find a ton within or around limestone for starters. Good luck, let me know how it goes 🤘
Fantastic thank you.
Love that large limestone chert rock , brilliant
Nice tips, that one huge Boulder looks right up my alley.
Keep it up. You’ll find stuff no one else has.
Tell me more! 😁🤟 I'm interested in what you look for as well. Thanks for your comment 😁
You made sparks, which means you can make fire. Many can not. Well done. Thank you.
It's been a learning process lol. Thank you! 👍
I have worked with a number of materials shaping stone tools. They all have one thing in common. If they are a good solid piece of material that is workable into tools, you can tap it with a pebble or small stone made of quartzite and it makes a sound like glass or some people say a bell.
That way you know you can work it and also it is solid without any fractures inside. Chert and flint are basically silica made up of millions of little fossilized microorganisms that came from ancient sea beds. Sometimes you will find fossils inside them which makes some really interesting and beautiful tools. The one drawback is that sometimes for fossil makes it much harder to work with. You have to know what you’re doing. I have seen some people take a grinding stone and grind the fossil down a little bit and then it’s like the rest of it. I’ve also seen actual artifacts that seem to have had this done. Whatever works!
There is a very strange type of green chert-like stone here in northern South Carolina. It has fossils in it sometimes. I have a flake tool I found that was made a very long time ago by someone out of this material. The archaeologist want it and I said how much? LOL. You could not pay me enough money to part with that artifact.
Awesome information! Thank you 🙏🤟
@@jeffrichardsonoutdoorschan5324 no problem. Happy knapping!
Really nice video. I am taking a geology class and your video shows great examples of chert in the field.
Thank you Roger! Good luck on your studies, I'm sure you could show me up 😉
Very cool video! Thank you!!! Now I know what to look for
Much appreciated 🤟
Well illustrated, and nice spot.
Thank you!
Yes, that was quartz. (River quartz)
Quartz is probably the most easily identifiable mineral out there. The outside is always usually orange with a predominantly rounded surface/profile and when you bust it open, it's white on the inside and breaks into jagged shards/flakes.
Edit: Another thing, since the river quartz also has a mohs hardness of/greater than 7, you can use it with a steel striker as a fire starter in very much the same way as you can with flint... well, you can pretty much use any stone that has a hardness of 7 or higher.
Edit edit: it needs to be hardened/tempered steel, mind you. You can't just use any old piece of metal, it needs to be carbon steel of some variety, not mild steel from home depot's welding section.
What you _can_ use, on the other hand, are things like socket/normal wrenches that have been ground/filed to have 90° (be careful to keep it cool and not let the metal start to change colour because of heat. Once it starts turning a straw-tan, that means it got to hot and you messed up the temper), you can use old or new saw blades of any variety (basically any tool blade, really), and basically any tool or agricultural piece you wouldn't want to break or deform (like leaf springs or harrow teeth, or any kind of suspension springs)
It's best if they have an angle and the flint/striking rock has a sharp edge/angle.
Thanks so much for the info, it's greatly appreciated. Yes you can use quartz with a striker; however, I usually end up with fragments because it is so brittle and breaks apart so easily. Another good note you mentioned is with the type of steel that will spark... I have had people ask me why theirs won't spark and they're usually using some old stainless steel tool or something else they have found. Carbon steel works best for sure! Thanks again for your info and your support. I would love to learn more in depth about your expertise. 😁👍
@@jeffrichardsonoutdoorschan5324 yeah, orange/river quartzite is usually a "in case of emergency" or "last resort" type thing when it comes to striking because of that. The reason being that the Crystal's are usually small and inconsistently embedded in a different mineral (the mineral it was forming in) so, when you go to strike the metal, it fragments at the faults created by the other minerals/sediments.
*However,* if you can find a large enough/solid enough quartz rock, you might be able to break it down to enough and get a core, that is, get a chunk of "pure" quartz (I say "pure" because there will rarely ever be anything pure in nature without some minor amount of "contamination", especially when it comes to minerals. With them, you just get "mostly")
Trust me, I do this to practice knapping and there are times when I get cores that are just too big, so I have to take a hammer to them and let me tell you, even with my 4lb cross pein hammer that is use for smithing, it takes a few good wakes to break the stupid things.
Another note, to make the edges of the stone less brittle, you can just abrade the with another stone or something... like a side walk, driveway, cinderblocks, piece of broken grindstone, or any other rough stone, really.
One way to potentially identify chert or other potential striking stones is to look at how they've naturally fractured. Do big round stones have some broken parts that have a similar concave flake type texture as an arrow head? If so, hit with a hammer stone, if it flakes of with a sharp edge, you can most likely use it.
That, or just carry a piece of glass and see if the shard can scratch it. Glass usually has a mohs hardness of about 5.5. If the shard can scratch the glass, then it more than likely be used as a striking stone.
But, honestly, the best advice I can give is to just know what the mineralogy of your area is and which stones can be used for striking.
@2:54 that piece looks like it may have been worked before. If you’re finding Flint/Chert there’s like Native American artifacts in the area. Keep your eyes peeled may find a nice point one day.
Always keep an eye peeled for rattlesnakes and cottonmouths around them rocks. I nearly stepped on a cottonmouth one time walking by the creek . They like rocky banks.
Really cool video it helped a lot
Thank you 👍
I paid for my emmergency fire starting kit. I’ve been robbed!!! (Thanks for the info.)
Thank you for the video
🤟
Just found some on sunday it looks cool
Awesome! 👍
Great content thanks for sharing
Thanks! 👍
Both yes... The easiest way I found was first in limestone as it was easier to see the difference in growth, but it definitely has it's own pieces
I made mine from an old bastard file. Excuse the language but that's the name of the file. I just cut it to size with a grinder. I recommend going through old tools, a garage sale, etc and finding an old carbon steel file. 👍
Chert and fatwood. Might be a good combination.
its very easy to find rock that with produce sparks. you don't need chert for it either. Quartzite will do as well, and its pretty common. If you want to find knappable rock... that is much more difficult. Even if you find chert, a lot of stuff isn't good enough to make anything out of. I can find red and green chert everywhere here near San Francisco, but its useless for making anything, because its riddled with veins of quartz and breaks into squarish lumps when struck. but it is good enough to make a small flaked edge out of and cut something with, or to produce sparks.
Thanks for the info and insight. I've noticed a lot of people aren't as successful finding chert/flint in their area so this was a learning process for me as well given the area. I mostly use it for flint and steel and haven't had much success with quartz either breaking up so much. Knapping is something I've checked out and would like to learn more if you have some more advise. Thanks again for your comment and support 💪
Thanks for the tip. I recently also heard about 'fatwood' which is dead pine impregnated with sap.
Yes! I have several videos of Fatwood on my channel, how to find, process, starting fire etc. Feel free to check those out. I love that stuff 🤟
Quartz or Quartzite.
Me lije flint
What region are you in? It's hard to tell from the cursory glance afforded by the viewers, but imo it looks very similar to the terrain where I live in Indiana.
You would be correct sir! Midwest 💪
Is this behind the ball field on 79?
Do your self a favor you here,friend--(go back and redress your striker)…they all need it from time to time, and yours is ready!!👍👍👍😇😇😇😇makes a HUGE difference!!!(your new friend in primitive fire making).::
I would have liked to see that last rock spalled to see what was inside. I am envious of finds like that I can't find flint like that where I live.
Where do you live?
bro i went here before