Throwback Wyoming Mountain Man Makes His Own Razor-Sharp Rock Knives

Casper’s Jim Shipley approaches his job like any other 19th century rockhound.

He picks up a palm-size piece of Kentucky hornstone, studies it, and with a baseball-size rock chosen from a campfire pit nearby carefully positioned in his right hand, strikes the hornstone.

A fleck of flint splits off.

A little shaping of that flint and it would be ready to insert into Daniel Boone’s Kentucky long rifle.

“Other than ladies of the night, this is probably the oldest profession,” Shipley said. “It goes back millions of years supposedly. They found the (prehistoric) human monkey people over there in Africa and whatnot and the reason that they knew how to start looking for them was because there were rocks around with sharp edges on them.”

Shipley, 66, likes to be called “Flint Knapper Jim,” and for the past 20 years he’s been learning the craft of making stone tools and flints as part of his mountain man flint knapper persona. He appears regularly at Fort Caspar, and like other reenactors enjoys teaching others about a time when the art of living required a lot more craft.

England’s Premier Flint

When the flintlock rifles were developed in the early 1600s, through much of the 1800s, flint knappers — particularly those in England — were in high demand. Shipley said the English were world famous for their flint and flint knappers. As the world’s superpower of the day, their military needed a lot of flint to keep the world under their control.

Flint knappers would take the high-quality flint rock of England and strike the rocks in a way that that produces flakes of the rock that could be used as tools and in rifles. Native American knappers would makes spearpoints and arrowheads with their knowledge of fracturing certain rocks with high silica content.

In the new world, when the mountain men headed West, flint knappers became an important part of the rendezvous where the mountain men were resupplied.

“You can’t do anything without a gun flint. Lead you could get locally, gunpowder you could make in a pinch, but you can’t just snap your fingers and get a gun flint,” Shipley said. “Flint knappers would be at rendezvous, and they would bring in wooden barrels and they would be stoked with gun flints, all trimmed out. They come in little squares, and they are going to have two working edges on them, so you can shoot one edge down and turn it around shoot the other edge down.”

Shipley began his interest in all-things outdoors as a boy. He grew up in Casper and would often be along the river near Fort Caspar, in the summer fishing and in the winter trapping muskrats with his buddies.

Several relatives were veterans who taught him at a young age how to shoot weapons. And a former stand of woods along the river, filled with deer, would be a dream place for young hunters with bows and arrows.

“We fancied that we were going to go down there and murder one of those deer with our bows and arrows and camp out. We were never that fortunate,” he said. That was what was on the TV back then, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett … we were just living the dream.”

Becoming A Knapper

Along his outdoor journey, he became interested in reenacting and knapping. The quest for rocks that can be turned into tools has since become a passion. He has immersed himself in the understanding of what rocks make the best ones for knapping.

He holds up a rock for Cowboy State Daily.

“This is dacite, it is a form of obsidian and so two weeks ago I was out in Oregon and went out there specifically to get a bunch of this and obsidian," he said. "I brought back five different kinds of glass from up there. It is extruded from the volcanos.”

Shipley said eastern Oregon is a treasure hunt for knappers because the foothills contain several volcanic cones and big fields of pyro clast — or rock that was ejected during a volcanic eruption.

In the mountains there, he said, there is a place called Glass Butte, where several knappers go to obtain the material for their craft.

“We go up there on a sojourn every once in a while and gather us a bunch of rock to last us until the next trip,” he said. “Dacite is my favorite. A lot of the guys they like other stuff, other obsidian. I flint knap all kinds of rock that has a high silica content that will conchoidal fracture.”

Shipley picks up the dacite, examines it carefully and takes a little tool that looks like a rod. He strikes the rock.

Sharp Tool

A fleck pops off the bottom that resembles something like an arrowhead, the size of a half-dollar coin. It is thicker in the middle and has thin edges. He holds it up to the sun so light can be seen coming around the edges.

“You can see where the light starts to pass through it. That’s called the feather edge,” he said. “That’s a sharp knife.”

The thicker part of the fleck of stone allows him to hold it between his fingers. He takes it and slices through a cloth sitting on his knee.

“And so, man has been beating on rock to get sharp edges for tools for a long time,” he said.

Shipley then takes the fleck and with another tool carefully works the edges so that it becomes a little duller. The reworking would make the stone fleck ideal for scraping hides.

After a short demonstration, he uses the tool to work the edge into something that again resembles a blade.

“It is not as sharp as it was originally," he said. "It will never be as sharp as it was originally, but it’s back to sharp enough that you can cut with it again.”

Shipley rattles off other rocks such as Wyoming’s quartzite, some of it good for knapping, Onondaga from the Great Lakes region, and holds a piece of stromatolite that he said is available in Wyoming’s Red Desert — he calls it one of the earliest precursors to coral.

“This was an inland ocean at one time,” he said. “I get excited about rock.”

Demonstrator

He explained how early civilizations used fire to make stones more knappable in their weapon and tool making. He calls his craft a continual learning process.

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve mastered some aspects of it, but I would say that I am proficient at some aspects of it,” he said. “There are guys who have been doing it for 20 and 30 years that are 10 times better than I am. At (some) point everybody finds something that calls them. A certain type of arrowhead, or a certain type of blade or a certain type of tool use. So, I like to demonstrate.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.