How to make a Sharper Edge
Flint has two distinctive characteristics that made it the favored material for tools and weapons. It can be split in any direction because its micro-crystalline structure has no "grain". And it fractures to a sharp edge. But whatever stone was used, once a flake was chipped from a core stone, it could be thinned and shaped with a soft hammer of bone or antler, altered with hammerstones of different weight or material, or trimmed using a stone or bone point to push off small splinters.
Photo courtesy of Heartland Associates, Inc.
Illustration by Melanie Froese.
