How strong are they? Like are they as strong as a regular knife that they won't break easily, or do they break quite easily?

Obsidian is basically glass so it is alot weaker than a steel blade. However because of its physical composition it can be extremely sharp. :)

Unless there is a type that I don't know of, they are small flakes of stone and break quite easily.  Very sharp, but brittle.

Ok I see....so I'll probably be better off with a steel knife, right?

right :)

Unless you want something for slicing things, some surgeons use obsidian scalpels over steel ones.

 True, they are sharper than steel. Also, they remain sharp long after steel dulls. It's like the ceramic knives on the market. Just don't drop or twist them and your' all right.
  However, in an area where flint and obsidian are abundant, it was easier just to make them. If you break one, you can make another up pretty quickly. I think ( and this is just my opinion) this is one of the reasons why iron and steel were never used by the Natives.  

I would say flint remains the top choice.

Some forms of quartz are harder to knap, but harder to break and take an edge better than obsidian.

Well I just got an obsidian knife from a friend today, and I'd say it works pretty well. Though I have to say, it looks quite delicate...

wrote on Jan 11^th, 2006 at 1:02pm:

I would say flint remains the top choice.

I would sa your high.  How is flint better than steel?

Sorry BadgerDude, iron and steel were used by the " Natives ". Usually as quick as they could get their hands on it. They would even cut up old pots to use the metal. ;)

Well i think it depends on what you want to do really.  FOr slicing obsidian/flint is probably better than steel because its so sharp, but for most or things whittling, chopping etc, steel.  Wouldn't want to be cut by either though!

Weren't circumcisums done with flint knifes in the biblical days ? :o

I didnt say it was better than steel. I meant I preferred it to obsidian. Personal preferrence.

I like steel and stone both as equally as the other. I would like to become a bladesmith for Thor's sake! :o

So I guess overall, steel is better. Anyways, I want a sword (a real functional one), but my mom wouldn't let me. She says I'm too young.  :(

My mother says "Good luck finding money for that" :-[

That also sucks. I think that she'll let me buy it once I get to college or something...and thats another 6 years.  :-/

Haha well with me i bought a cheap fleamarket rat tang and loved swords from the start. So to pay for all that junk i get i do alot of working, money is not too hard to come by if you dont mind the work :) also when you do work do what ever you can to put away money just a little at a time.  :)

Knapped glass is one of the sharpest edges known to man, only a few molecules across. It is favoured over steel in some very delicate surgical operations.
The problem is the edge is so fine, and most glass/obsidian/flint is so brittle that the edge can't stand up to much practical use, plus everytime it is used to cut something heavily, and especially as it gets duller, it leaves a trail of tiny particles in whatever it is cutting, which can have a rather nasty effect on some things.

wrote on Jan 14^th, 2006 at 10:53pm:

That also sucks. I think that she'll let me buy it once I get to college or something...and thats another 6 years.  :-/

Maybe you can learn to use one in that time?  ;)

Seriously, a sword is just a piece of metal unless you know how to use it. Or actually, it's worse, as you might hurt yourself or someone other with it - or even break it! And if you don't have an idea about swords, it'd rather hard to choose one. The ones that are balanced properly cost a lot of money. And if you don't know what kind of a sword you'd prefer when you go shopping for one...  ::)

Modern fencing or some kind of an oriental martial art would probably be easiest to find. Some martial arts are only about the sword, some include some basic moves with it while focusing on other things. But if you're going for a European sword, what you want is historical fencing. I mentioned thearma.org site on the proper forum some time ago, and got very informative replies.

I know how to use a sword ;) Used one before. I still can't persuade my mom...

well what i do is collect as much info on the sword/weapon that i can find. I ask people if they ever bought it and what they think, I read articals one of my favortie places is this:
http://www.myarmoury.com/reviews.html

also have a look at the collections and things. :)

I'm saving up my cash to get the all-metal nice lookin Gothic Battleaxe. Only 80 bucks! Problem is they don't make them anymore  :(.

I went to a knife show recently. Never buy a knife over 6 inches made of stainless steel and expect them to work. At all. Buy the real thing, not cheap replicas, even if it promises "Authentic! Worthy of ....... "fill in the blanks.

What would you use a battle axe for?

What's wrong with stainless steel? I have many knives over 6" made of stainless and never had any problems.

wrote on Jan 11^th, 2006 at 9:40pm:

Sorry BadgerDude, iron and steel were used by the " Natives ". Usually as quick as they could get their hands on it. They would even cut up old pots to use the metal. ;)

Now how could natives without any sophisticated tools have any chance at all of cutting up steel pots and succesfully shaping them??!?! I would say that Badgerdude is actually right, that often just whipping up another flint point is easier than just going out and buying a steel one. Sure they could get their hands on metal, but where ever you are getting your information from must be pretty dubious.

maybe he is useing the word cut losely If you heated the pot up to red could you bend a hunk off?

Sorry, Hellfire, but you are, in fact, wrong.  The use of metal points by "primitive" peoples across the world is well documented.  Hoop iron was used frequently in America by native peoples, who had no other iron.  They would take the iron from wagons and carts, bend it, shape it, flatten it with rocks, heat it.  Brass kettles given to people in the north-east would quickly be torn up, and many other objects of metal would be taken to pieces.  I'm sure it's not as difficult as it sounds.

is it possible that the natives somehow were able to knap the metal in this fashion:
http://woodsdrummer.com/solitude3.html
?

i realize how hard this would be without pliers, and even with pliers i was unable to do something similar to a shovel i found in the woods(i think i was trying to do it to a thicker peice of metal than he was using).  perhaps they could bang a pot, for exaple, outward until the metal would crack into different peices, and then they would further work this.

but in many cases, flint and obsidian knives looked far more beautiful than metal ones, and perhaps they were easier to make, considerenig all the trouble you would have to go through in order to make a metal knife.

wrote on May 14^th, 2006 at 8:18am:

Now how could natives without any sophisticated tools have any chance at all of cutting up steel pots and succesfully shaping them??!?! I would say that Badgerdude is actually right, that often just whipping up another flint point is easier than just going out and buying a steel one. Sure they could get their hands on metal, but where ever you are getting your information from must be pretty dubious.

Those Natives were able to build pyramids that were larger than those in Egypt and walls with tighter spacing than any thing in Europe at the time. All without "sophisticated" tools. Metal can be easily worked with stone. That's why you sharpen a knife on a "stone".

I have used a lot of both good Obsidian Knives break
good steel knives don't. I have made a few Obsidian Knives i get cut a lot more making one than when i make a steel knife
but remeber the natives did switch to steel
so theres your answer to really whats better

one must take in to consideration the job the blade is intended for.  if you are going to be hacking through a tree or soing something else, a steel knife will work better because of it's duratbility, though you may have to sharpen it a few times.  if you are going to perform precision eye surgery, you might reach for an absidian blade, as they are up to about 500 times sharper than a steel scalpel, having an edge only a few microns across when made properly, an obsidian blade is better for this because of it's superior edge, you will not have to sharpen it if you do not abuse it.

everything needs to be put in context.  you can not put out such a blanket statement like steel is better than obsidian, though for most of our purposes here on the site, it is.  it is comparable to saying the bow is better than the sling, just because you can fire it faster, or something like that.

I once read an article about a man, who had a change to try real flint tools in some african village. And he made a bow with those tools.

In the end he said that flint tools were ALMOST as good as steel tools.

He had to handle them carefully though

I would say they are.
More flimsy though, more delicate.

It would be a lot harder to chop down a tree with a flint axe than a steel one for sure...but it would still be pretty sharp! ;D

the technique for chopping down trees with stone tools usually was something like
-burn a ring around the bottom of the tree
-hack and dig out the ash
-burn deeper into the space
-rinse and repeat

Techniques for stone tools, and the tools themselves, varied, and vary, a lot from area to area.  In Irian Jaya, native guys just hack away at the big tropical trees using stone heads on long flexible axe hafts - but in other - particularly temperate - areas, such as in America or prehistoric Europe, trees might be completely cut down using fire.
 In any case: for ease of use, I personally favour steel knives for carving, because they are a lot quicker.  However, in Micronesia, the first Europeans in the area tried to trade their iron and steel axes for island produce, but when the Micronesians tried out their new axes for making a canoe, they found that the steel cut too deep and they couldn't control it like they could a shell adze.  So it is not possible to generalise about tools - it is all subjective.