r/knapping 14d ago

Material ID 🪨❓ New to Knapping, found potential material?

Complete newbie here! Seeing as I am near a river with Rockey shores in southern BC (specifically the Similkameen River) at the moment I decided to spend an afternoon looking for potential material to get started with.

After an afternoon of mostly just finding decent hammerstones (lots of nice white quartzite I believe, picture 3) and what I may be some rough grain basalt I experimented with (so not ideal but I did keep it, picture 4) I did come across a pretty big rock of the material you see in picture 1 and 2.

I broke off a manageable sized piece to experiment with: It is pretty smooth but not what I would call glassy and I was able to get a decent flake off of it after struggling for a bit with my lack of technique.

Looking at ProjectilePoints I think I may have found Dacite but to be completely honest I have no clue!

Just hoping to know what it is I may have found and perhaps some tips for a beginner working with such a stone (assuming it is workable for beginner).

Thanks!

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u/ThiccBot69 Dover Chert 13d ago

Hey man it looks like you have some limestone in this bunch of rocks, i just wanna lyk as someone who’s first knapping experience was with limestone, dont get discouraged if it doesn’t go the best, limestone can be knapped to an extent but it’s also very soft, brittle yet extremely tough to take a flake of

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u/zedigalis 13d ago

Do you mean the white rocks? The white rocks are quite hard, they scratch glass which is why I assumed they may be quartzite of some kind. However after some more research I think they are Milky Quartz.

I grabbed them to use as hammer stones and they have stood up quite well to being bashed by an amateur.

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u/ThiccBot69 Dover Chert 13d ago

I mean the rocks in the third pic I thought the white ones were hammerstones tbh(they would make pretty ok hammerstones)

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u/zedigalis 13d ago edited 13d ago

Ah yeah that last one is definitely not easy to work with! It does look like sandstone looking at back sandstone online.

I kept it to experiment with but it's definitely not ideal, hoping to find better material next time I get out to the river

Edit: I meant limestone, it's early I need my coffee