Talk:Knapping

message: I have just added some information to this page that expands its relevance beyond the archaeological. in doing so I have removed the rather dubious reference to prehistoric cultures. Mainly because prehistoric is a time based definition, whereas there are still cultures today that exist using what we would term neolithic technology, and the number of cultures that practised stone working for tools well into the 1900's was considerable.
hope you will agree DavidP 00:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: This article is poorly named; the first sentence talks about the person, the rest focuses on the knapping process.  Also, flintknapping singles out flint, implicitly excluding obsidian, [[glass], chert, and other materials workable by lithic reduction.  I think the article should be renamed knapping, and focus on the methods used in making stone tools.  Whether or not the resulting article should be separate from or merged into lithic reduction will probably also come up.  scot 21:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree. FISH.  Obsidian knapping is the most important knapping in the developed countries due to the high demand for scalpels made of obsidian, as they have thinner blades than steel.--67.71.18.40 23:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Technically speaking, those scalpels are not made from obsidian, as obsidian is volcanic glass. Medical scalpels are made from factory produced glass (produced specifically for medical scalpels). But, it's the same principle. Obsidian was used in the past to make medical scalpels, but not in the modern era.--O crandell (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Yes, I also agree. The article should be renamed "knapping". As well, the term "flint" is generally misused by archaeologists. "Flint" (as mineralogists and petrologists define it) in fact refers specifically to microcrystaline quartz found in chalk formations. "Common chert" is found in limestone formations. The vast majority of artefacts which most archaeologists categorise as "flint", are in fact "chert". --O crandell (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: you can knap with a broken pop bottle piece. 174.153.179.240 (talk) 06:17, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Article name

message: Much of knapping is involved in knowing the pressure angle, that is, the angle the rock will flake off in, depending on the angle in which you hit the rock.
When you pulse energy through a flat piece of material, the angle of the stress wave that travels out is fairly consistent despite a change in material.
So I can talk about a stress wave going through glass as being very much like the stress waves going through flints.
So I can say that the pressure wave that breaks the flint in knapping is the same as the cone seen in a BB hole in glass.  All the BB hole cones you've ever seen in glass windows are at the same angle, and they are the same in the flint. The flint breaks at that stress cone.
frameless|center|bb hole in glass
So draw a line where the BB flew, and a line on the cone of the BB hole, and you have that "optimum" knapping angle.  I put optimum in quotes because in the artform that is knapping, small changes alter results, but basically that's the angle. 174.146.172.210 (talk) 02:52, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  pressure angle understanding 

message: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pression_(technique_de_taille)
This is the French version of Knapping. I am honestly surprised this hasn't been linked properly yet. Please verify and correct, merge the two pages as the same topic or something. I do not know how to use the interface. 76.64.108.178 (talk) 21:46, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  French version of page 

message: WOuld be nice if there are structural qualities of the stone itself that make for intinsically desirable knapping. As in Mohs Hardness range for specific tools or styles. Whether crystalline structure characteristics of the rock molecules are of any concern: like Crystal Class, Space Group, Cleavage plane, Lattice System (ie: Monoclinic, Triclinic) have any bearing on types of stone used/chosen for use in sculpture? Or even if particular Categories of Rock are preferred more than others? 81.102.111.206 (talk) 10:36, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intrinsic qualities of stone needed for good knapping and/or preferred for particular style...