Woodlife

Last weekend was spent in Mark’s wood learning how to knap flint. There’s only one person who can teach this and that is the eminent and legendary flint knapper, John Lord (or perhaps his son, Will).

We were all spell-bound as he tucked a huge rock under his arm, balanced it on his thigh and proceeded to break off chunks of flint. None of it was random. Every strike with the hard hammer (stone) or soft hammer(antler) was deliberate and followed the natural contours of the flint.

Very little material was wasted as sharp flakes became cutting tools and arrow heads and larger pieces were formed into hand axes.  John knew which way the flint would break before he hit it and knew exactly for what purpose it would be used for. The flint did exactly as it was bade.

After watching John demonstrate the craft, we were gently and kindly guided and encouraged into either creating large pieces for hand axes or spear heads or for the more opportunistic (and less confident) like me, we grubbed around the floor for suitable pieces to finish into small hand tools or arrow heads using the rather more delicate pressure flaking technique.

Whatever the style, for two days, all you could hear reverberating throughout the wood was the eery chipping of stone-on-stone and antler-on-stone as ancient tools and artifacts began to take shape under modern hands probably more used to using computers. Dog walkers craned their necks until comically, they looked like giraffes trying to see what was going on. No-one came over.

The picture above is a flint core that the knapper would take with him in a pouch to quickly knap more razor sharp flakes.

Although I probably didn’t take to this as readily as leather-working I certainly appreciated what I was doing and appreciated the beauty of the material. I even managed to make a couple of bits. This was a knife I made. The glue is pine resin and the binding is flax made into cordage. It’s sharp enough to cut leather.

On the second day, I was even remembering some of the complicated theory of percussion cones, facets, platform preparation and percussion techniques and I started to look a little more deeply into what the “flint was telling me”.  The picture above is my leaf-shaped arrow head made out of a lovely brown flint that will be made into a necklace.

On more than one occasion I had the strangest of feelings (quite emotive even) that what I was doing was indeed one of the most primitive of skills. I connected this with tracking and from then on in my mind the two were firmly cemented together as the earliest trade and earliest science. Together they addressed man’s earliest requirement; the need to hunt.

Perhaps I was consciously connecting with my primitive side, although it’s got to be said that in the prehistoric tool making factory I was probably the one who was given the task of sticking on the “Made in UK” label!

It was a great few days in the woods helped along by good weather and great company as usual. A personal thanks to John Lord and his wife Val (who taught us a splendid way to make cordage) and everyone else who came, especially Mark who organised the event.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.