"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

Mary Fisher wrote in message
t...
And how did they get a piece of flint big enough?

Or were they very small sickles?

The only result of your reply is to make me even more curious!

I would assume they were a wooden sickle with small flints set into the
wood to create a cutting edge. This would give it a 'ragged' blade and
build in a sawing action, but this is supposition based on other stuff
I've read about.

There is a fellow in the US that makes obsidian knives for eye surgeons
using the same flaking methods as were used for flint knives. Laboratories
also use freshly broken glass knives to section specimens for examination
for microscopes. So the art is not completely lost.

While the glass knives are now mostly made with a machine the original
knives were made by scribing a piece of 3/16 thick glass 2 or 3 inches wide
and whacking it on the edge of a table with the scribed side up instead of
down as one would normally break glass. If properly done it leave a little
edge the is extremely sharp.

Freshly knapped flint of the right kind would be sharper than any steel
blade could ever be and hold its edge a great deal longer. I have found
arrow heads that were still pretty sharp after being in the ground hundreds
of years.

Gordon