Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Primitive Skills => Topic started by: Marc St Louis on November 07, 2007, 11:58:16 pm
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I was a bit stupefied today. My girlfriend is a musician and she has been rehearsing for a Christmas concert at a Cathedral in the town closest to me with other musicians, this Cathedral dates back to the 1800's. As we were walking from the back parking lot to the front doors I noticed some familiar looking stone on the ground right beside the walls of the Cathedral. I bent down and picked it up and sure enough it was chert. Then I had a closer look at the church and low and behold I saw where the chert came from. The whole Cathedral is made of large slabs of stone and this stone is chert. Amazing. The chert looked to be of pretty good quality so naturally I took a bit of time to gather some. I guess I will be making some points from some "holy" stone :).
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Holy stone from a chertch. ;D Sounds like some major mojo. Marc I guess you are safe from lightening this late in the season. ;D Pat
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cool :D ive got some funny stuff but im keepin it in so i dont cause any trouble ;D
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Good advice jamie... :-Xmums the word :-X
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I'm pretty flexible when it comes to religion and the thought crossed my mind to come back and chip some chert off the building itself but........:)
Here's a picture of the stone
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Not sure I would want to chip stones off of anybody's house.
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Me neither
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Ahh, the disease ;D. Think I'd be trying to find out where they quarried the stone for the church, but then again it was probably built in George Washington's day and theirs a city on top of it now ;D.
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A you could find a piece sticking out and chip an arrow head,leaving it attached to the church. ;)
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Many houses in England are made from Flint. I think that the houses would just about disapear if they were owned by a Knapper!
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A long time ago, I was working as an electrician's helper, when we got a job doing a dentist's office. Well they were pouring the drive way, and parking lot, and then they dumped a load of field stone for the the front of the building. I got to looking at it, and I saw that there were large chunks of Chert in it. I asked the contractor if I could have a couple of chunks of it. He said sure. So I got some. Unfortunately, I gave most of it away, and busted the rest of it trying to knap. Which at the time I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. Still can't knap, but I have a little more of a clue about now though. I do still have a small piece in my flint and steel kit, in my possibles bag. Makes a nice big batch of sparks. I would like to get together with Mullet, and his neighbor, and learn how to actually make some correct flakes. I left him a note to let me know if we could do that, and when it would the best time for him. Any time is fine for me, since I am now retired.
Stick Bender
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Marc, longtime no see, how are you doing? :)
Awesome, I'll have to visit that building sometime when I am up there and take pics, both cause of the historical part but also the chert LOL
I've seen buildings in England made from flint, it is so neat to see something like that.
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Hey Paul. Don't be such a stranger. I miss seeing your "primitive bows" and your knapping. Pat
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Hi Pat! How are you? Yeah I know, I got a little carried away with Photography and that has become my hobby for the last year. However, I did make an atlatl and a point this week so that's a start :)
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Marc, can you get me the name and address of the Church? as "Historical Hamilton", we'll do some research and find out where it came from :)
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neat find, the closest thing i have seen is hammerstones in front of red lobsters. ehkahk, (pleasantly) surprised to see you posting, stay around. SOM
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Here is one even worse as far as building supplies goes. There was a small office in downtown Stevenson Al that had been owned at one time by a guy who had a bunch of land in the area. The story was he had excavated a mound on Long Island near Bridgeport and found so many arrow heads that he decided to use them as the filler in the concrete sidewalk to his office.
Imagine my surprise when I first saw this sidewalk ( in the mid 70s)with arrows heads embedded in the concrete, not broken ones but some really nice pieces, thousands of them. The sidewalk was probably made in the 50s when projectile points were so common people considered them a curiosity but nothing of value.
An old guy told me arrowheads were so common near Bridgeport and South Pittsburg he would pick up pockets full along the river and skip them across the water because they skipped much better than ordinary rocks.
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When the first bridge was built to Hilton Head Is. SC the earthen ramps up to the bridge and the causeway across the marsh were made from old NA shell ring material with lots of artifacts. On the property that most of my artifact collection came from, not far from the bridge to HHI, is now a high dollar plantation(Colleton River Plantation) and the golf course sits on the spot where most of the artifacts were found. The original owner's son found a 10" obsidian blade at the same spot. Pat
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that will be either good medicine or you will be smited :)
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Glad to see you posting Paul. I sent you an e-mail awhile back but I guess you were busy. Do you still have the same e-mail address?
The church is called the Pro Cathedral, don't ask me why it's called that. It's present location is at the corner of Algonquin St. and Macintyre. I know that was not its original location but was moved there. The building is quite large and it's not uncommon to see spalls of chert laying on the ground that have recently cetached from the building. There's also several large stones on the ground that were left over from the building/reassembly of the church. It would be interesting to know where they got all the stone for the building