Alrighty! I got some pretty nice stuff that I will be uploading on Saturday or so (if I remember!) That coveres some nicer knives of bone, bifaced stone, copper and bronze that I am excited for! But first I wanted to make a post to mention a far more humble, far less impressive, but very useful class of lithic tools that has competed in our history with both more complicated stone tools and even metal tools! In my time making tools, learning how to flintknap, and often just as convenient razor blades in the day to day life, nothing has been more convenient than the humble flake tools!

So lets talk about flakes!
A flake is essentially a piece of rock broken from a core, a sharp shard as it were. These things break off razor sharp from most any knappable stone or glass They can come in a lot of shapes depending on how the rock was struct but will generally come with a lot of sharp edges! They can be big, they can be small, they can be round, etc. But all of them can be more or less used as edged tools as is with little to no modification after being struck.
Making a solid flake can be done in quite literally seconds, without any tool more complicated than another rock to serve as a hammerstone, and require no skill to make aside from some very straightforward striking on a rock to maximize the chance of getting a good flake. You hit the rock with another rock and it will likely give you a flake.
These flakes, in whatever size or shape they are in, are almost always readily available for use as knives or cutting tools with very little modification as I said, but can also be further modified into a variety of tools. These can range from toothed flake saws for sawing small pieces of wood, awls for poking through materials or drills for twisting through pieces of wood. They can also be easily modified into things like Scrapers for scraping hides for tanning or for woodworking! In fact many simple tools can be manufactured from a variety of flakes unifacially with very little effort or even skill!
And so of course, they are one of the most common tooltypes of the dragonscape

Early survivors of the Awakening, or Jãrsta are all in very similar situations, being left in what is more or less a wilderness with absolutely nothing to use to help them survive in the day, and would need to quickly learn how to make tools to understandably not die!
most of these early tools are simple, sometimes discovered through desperate experimentation and one of the more widespread sorts of tools are flake tools! A drek with a notion that "cavemen made tools by banging rocks together" eventually stumbling across the right rock/glass to break to get a basic sharp edge. From there these simple flakes would likely continue to see use even as the drekir survivors develop more intricate tool traditions and technologies as of course, you can't really beat the expedience of making a flake for a quick cutting edge! Though of course as the generations stack Flake/Core technology tends to mix with other technologies like copperworking, prepared core technology, biface technologies and bone/chitin/groundstone technologies.

So flakes and other very simple tools are very reliable! The majority of human prehistory was dominated by core and flake technology which itself lasted as long and longer than other lithic technologies in many regions of the world, even after copper, bronze, and iron metallurgy had taken control of many different regions. And even as drekir tool industries and traditions grow increasingly intricate, its never an unusual sight to see a drek using a disposable flake as a humble cutting tool.

So yeah
Normally I like to go into the manufacture process but these are all flakes! Its nothing fancy, nothing skilled, The flakes here are a small selection of Literally hundreds and hundreds of flakes that I make in any of my spalling or flintknapping, These are nothing special which is kinda the point!

There is my favorite, the large obsidian triangle flake that I've used for weeks now as a convinient knife for cutting all sorts of things, including steak! Great conversation starter cutting a steak at a meal with a giant sharp glass rock.
Next to that is a chert flake I've used for even longer! Its curve is great for cutting plants (or opening boxes)

Next is not really a flake tool but still worth mentioning here as its very simple. That big chert rock is known as a Chopper which is just simply made by removing a few flakes exposing a sharp edge that can be used for... chopping! Wood, for breaking bones when butchering meat, probably mostly wood for me! Its a very simple tool for chopping branches, its not graceful but it works.

The next flake to the right of that is a good candidate for modification, I plan on turning it into a flake saw but I wanted to more present the untouched flakes, but by simply pressure flaking or cutting teeth into that piece of obsidian I can very easily make it more of a useful woodworking implement. It could also be turned into a scraper!

and below that is a lightly modified flake that I just did some more hammering on to break off some smaller flakes that I've used as an awl for poking holes in leather, and as a simple drill that I've twisted through wood to make holes!

None of these are graceful tools or that pretty but they don't have to be to be effective, useful tools!.. That said excited to show off the more intricate stone knives I've been making recently! That will come soon

Be well!