Civilization manualBook 1: From Bare Hands to Steam and Electricity765 entries · 23 phases · 100 years
The Island
Phase 01 — First days: water, fire, shelter  /  About year 1
01.03

Sharp stone flake

the first cutting edge

MakingYear 1Story day 1Stands on 1 earlier

AWhat it needs

Needs 1 other product.

View
  • 01.03 Sharp stone flakeMaking Year 1 needs 1 product

Open a box to see what it needs. A dashed box is a product already drawn in full: click it to jump there. In the org chart, drag to move around.

BWhy

A fresh flake of flint is sharper than a steel knife. It cuts bark, cord, wood, hide and meat. Almost nothing else in this phase can be made without it.

CYou need

  • Stone that breaks like glass: flint or chert (grey, brown or black lumps with a chalky skin), obsidian (black volcanic glass), or fine-grained quartzite or basalt
  • Hammerstones (01.02)
  • A pad of folded leaves over the thigh

DSteps

  1. Test the stone. Break a corner off with the heavy hammerstone. Good stone shows a smooth, shell-shaped scar with a sharp rim.
  2. Find or make a platform: a flat face that meets another face at a corner sharper than a square corner.
  3. Sit down. Rest the stone on the padded thigh with that corner facing up and away from you.
  4. Strike the flat face a finger-width in from the edge, with a glancing blow that travels down and outward, as if to shave the stone. Do not hit straight down.
  5. The flake comes off the underside. Catch it on the pad.
  6. Turn the stone and use the scar you just made as the next platform. Work round the stone.
  7. Sort the flakes. Long with a straight edge: a knife. Thick and curved: a scraper. Pointed: a borer.
  8. Rub the back edge of a knife flake on a rough stone until it is blunt, so it can be held without cutting the hand.
  9. No flint? Stand a quartz pebble on a flat rock and smash it from above. Pick the sharpest splinters.

EIt worked if

  • The flake shaves hair from the forearm and cuts a green stick the thickness of a thumb in under a minute.

FWhat goes wrong

  • Nothing comes off, or the edge only crushes. The corner is too blunt, or the blow is too far from the edge. Find a sharper corner and strike nearer the rim.
  • Short stubby flakes. The blow is too steep. Make it more glancing and follow through.
  • The stone breaks in half. A hidden flaw. Use both halves as new cores.

GSafety

  • Flint cuts to the bone without being felt. Hold flakes by the blunted back, and cut away from the body.
  • Chips fly. Turn the face aside, keep others an arm's length off, and never work where people walk barefoot.
  • Bury the waste in one pit. A splinter in a foot can cripple a person for weeks here.

HIn the story

The first cut on the island is Hiro's own thumb. Grace binds it with a strip of his shirt. By evening he has a row of blades laid out by size on a flat rock, and people are queuing for them.

IFigures

Side view of the stone, the platform corner and the path of the blow, with the flake shown coming off the underside.
Fig. 01.03-aSide view of the stone, the platform corner and the path of the blow, with the flake shown coming off the underside.diagram
Hiro seated with a flint core on his padded thigh, hammerstone raised, Kofi watching from an arm's length away.
Fig. 01.03-bHiro seated with a flint core on his padded thigh, hammerstone raised, Kofi watching from an arm's length away.making
A knife flake, a scraper and a borer side by side, with the blunted back of the knife marked.
Fig. 01.03-cA knife flake, a scraper and a borer side by side, with the blunted back of the knife marked.thing