Knifemaker Always Caught Knapping

Craig Ratzat of Springfield, Ore., makes knives the old-fashioned way: by chipping off one flake at a time.

Ratzat, 43, is a self-taught craftsman in the ancient art of creating knives, arrowheads and other tools from obsidian, flint, agate and similar materials.

The process is called knapping, a word that means to strike a quick, hard blow.

Ratzat’s knives bring $75-$400 each, depending on their size, the material they’re made from and the workmanship. Most of his knives are made of obsidian, a natural volcanic glass. But some are chipped from modern “high-tech” silicon materials such as fiber-optic glass, which has a unique sheen.

Ratzat supplies other knappers around the country with “spalls,” chunks of obsidian he gathers from volcanic areas in eastern Oregon.

Ratzat traces his fascination with knapping to the discovery of an arrowhead when he was only 6 years old. “I became a very avid artifact hunter around our home near Rogue River in southern Oregon,” he recalls. “By the time I was 12 I was regularly finding arrowheads, and trying to make arrowheads myself.

“I had no instruction, no books, nothing. I just dinked around with it, and by the time I got out of high school I was able to make an arrowhead that would fool most people.”

That interest was rekindled 12 years ago when Ratzat walked into a knapping demonstration being given by an archaeologist, John Fagan, who at the time was for the Army Corps of Engineers.

“I got very excited,” Ratzat said. “I found out there were classes in how to do this, and that there were other knappers around the country who did this kind of thing.”

Ratzat works with a few simple tools in a workshop in his garage, tapping away at a chunk of obsidian on his thigh with a round copper bar. A leather pad protects his leg from the sharp edges of the obsidian.

Obsidian can provide “the sharpest edge known to man,” Ratzat said. Sharper, even, than surgical steel.

“If you get cut by surgical steel, it actually tears out a row of cells,” he said. “When you get cut by obsidian, it severs individual cells. It’s that sharp.”

Obsidian, however, does not hold a sharp edge well and has to be resharpened by chipping off flakes along the edge. For pre-Iron Age cultures, such constant resharpening eventually turned spear points into knives, knives into arrowheads.

Knappers are able to shape obsidian because there is “no grain, no direction,” to the structure of the material.

The force from any striking blow applied to it always travels through it in a cone shape, as illustrated by the uniform shape that shows up in windows that have been shot with a B-B gun.

Because of that cone principle,the material breaks in a predictable manner, Ratzat said. “I can adjust the size of the flake I want to take off by changing the angle at which I strike it.”

Ratzat can produce a finished arrowhead in 10 or 15 minutes, a knife in three or four hours.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: TAKE A KNAP Ratzat has produced a two-hour how-to video, “Caught Knapping,” available from Neo Lithics, 1530 B St., Springfield, OR, 99747, (541) 747-1399.