Thanks for the comments. It's just a hobby though, and I've no wish to be beholding to anyone. Catch me if you're passing through here, and I might just give up a sample.
I do need to get back at it though, as I noticed one of my cookie tins is about empty. Anyone from Oregon that's going to our statewide Hunter Ed conference in about a month can try to pick up some framed samples in our benefit auction. I'm putting about a 4 inch Christmas tree shaped point and a willow leaf type blank in a shadow box. Sometimes I buy them back myself though if the offers aren't enough to cover the framing.
Edited for Roundoak:
Discerning modern and antique pieces??? There are some scientific methods that can difinitively seperate artifacts and recent reproductions. Newly exposed surfaces of obsidan or about any stone begin to absorb small amounts of water at near geologic rates. Samples from the surface of a piece can be viewed under a microscope, and one will see sort of a moisture front in some distance from the surface. With knowledge of how quickly that front migrates into the stone and some detailed measurements (probably at near micron levels), one can determine how long ago the surface was initially exposed to the air.
Pieces out and about in nature often have a dull and a bright surface. The patinaed dull side has been exposed to the sun and picked up minerals etc that are deposited by evaporating rain water. The side sitting in the soil surface may be bright and shiny. I have some rejected shards that I've dropped out back though, and they can take on those characteristics in just 2 or 3 years.
Many modern knappers also saw out their blanks and use copper tools for flaking the surfaces. If one does not completely knap off all the sawed surfaces, that is an obvious give away. Copper was present and used by some of the early civilizatons, but an obvious copper streak or tiny flake on a knapped edge may also be a hint of modern work. Using rock saws to rough shape points helps one generate some beautiful works of art and some truly giant pieces. I know a couple folks in the region that work commercially. On their work, every flake goes to the midpoint of the piece, and flakes are perfectly aligned and spaced like herring bones.
Sawing also lets one get a lot of large pieces from a single rock. When I start hammering on a softball sized cobble and am striving for a large piece, about 80% of the stone will end up as waste. I may finish with maybe two points in hand. With sawed slabs, one might generate about 8 or 9 pieces of various sizes and finish with about 20% in the waste pile.
If one is truly interested in giving it a try, surf up some of the Waldorf instructional books. Living near obsidian sources is also a blessing, as its the easiest of stones to work. One needs strong fingers to process the more granular stones like flint, chert, or wood. When knapping, the greatest frustrations come early as one reduces good rock to nothing but waste. As the skills improve, the frustrations show up later. That's when the piece is 95% done and one breaks it when trying to chip in the final notches. Then you just rework it to a shorter piece.
Interestingly, the most difficult of points to fabricate are the oldest of those found in north America. They are the Folsom and Clovis points, and modern man has still not definitively determined how they were hammered out. Some suggested methods demand 3 or 4 hands to accomplish. Here's a link to some examples of those:
Folsom Link I've made a few efforts at those, and running that final flute the length of ones near finished work leaves me with more pieces than I want.
