Black Obsidian is a popular volcanic glass favored by flintknappers for its consistent quality and uniform flaking. Knappers who favor pressure flaking techniques usually enjoy Obsidian in particular for its potential to run super long flakes.
Our cleaned and graded black Obsidian spalls range in size from 3-6 inch pieces. This size is good for large and medium points and blades. Ordering 1 pound of this material will not ensure that you will get a single 6 inch spall. Most often a one pound order will contain two pieces of stone in the approx 4 inch range. To make certain you receive the full range of sizes of this material you will need to order multiple pounds or purchase a flat rate box of material.
WARNING: Obsidian flakes can be sharper than razor blades! Exercise extreme caution!
We strive to provide the cleanest, blemish free knapping material within our means. On some spalls however, blemishes do get past us because not all defects are evident at first or even second inspection. In efforts to avoid defects as much as possible, we perform a few thinning blows to ensure that you do not pay for large amounts of waste, over thick spalls, or fragile/thin sizes that will shatter with the first strike.
Large knapping material requires large billets. Attempting to knap large stone with too small of a billet will damage the billet and not produce sizable thinning flakes early on in the process as needed. If you are graduating to this size material from one of our kits, we recommend adding a large copper percussion billet to your order. If you are unsure about what you need, please visit our Flintknapping Buyer's Guide, or feel free to contact us and we will be glad to help.
Obsidian is a rock which is a type of naturally occurring glass, produced by volcanoes (igneous origin) when a margins of felsic lava flows, where cooling is more rapid. Because of the lack of crystal structure, obsidian blade
surgical scalpel blades.
While a rock like basalt is dark because of ferromagnesian enrichment, obsidian consists mainly of silicon dioxide,
very similar to that of granite and rhyolite. It is sometimes classified as a Mineraloid because obsidian is
lunar volcanic eruptions, though few scientists now agree with this theory.
While pure obsidian is always dark in appearance, the color varies depending on the presence of impurities. Iron
small, white, radially clustered crystals of Cristobalite in the black glass develop a blotchy or snowflake pattern
rock was flowing before being cooled.
These bubbles can produce interesting effects
such as a golden or silver sheen, known as
Sheen Obsidian
or a multi-color rainbow sheen known as
Rainbow Obsidian
Another type of Obsidian called
Tri Flow Obsidian
has a mix of red/brown, black and clear swirls
or layers in it making it popular for knapping.
Another popular type has relatively equal swirls of red,
brown or golden coloring mixed with a black.
This is referred to as Mahogany Obsidian
as the swirls much resemble a woodgrain pattern.
Obsidian is relatively soft with a typical hardness rating of 5 to 5.5. Obsidian, unlike crystals, has no regular
form edges sharper than the finest steel blades. For this reason, obsidian was used by many native cultures to
are a myriad of colors, patterns and mixes of Obsidians, making them a very desirable collector item.
The name Obsidian (from the Latin obsidiana) comes from Obsius, the name of the ancient Roman who
Obsidian Knives or obsidian blades online for sale at Atlanta Cutlery. Obsidian blade or knife by Dale Duby is all made with natural materials like wood, bone handles etc.
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