Kila man uses flint knapping to bring history to life
A long-time arrowhead collector, Kila's Tom Blais has been learning how to make the stone tools himself for nearly 30 years. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Kila's Tom Blais uses traditional stone and bone tools to produce stone arrowheads, knives and more. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Tom Blais uses a tool fashioned from moose antler to work a stone. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Tom Blais reaches for one of his bone tools while working to create a stone knife. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Tom Blais reaches for one of his bone tools while working to create a stone knife. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Tom Blaise uses a piece of antler to create the blade of a stone knife. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
A selection of finished arrows created by Tom Blais using traditional techniques. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Stones demonstrating the process Tom Blais uses to shape a stone into a usable tool. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
A stone knife created by Kila flint knapper Tom Blais. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
A selection of stone tools created by Kila's Tom Blais. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
An obsidian knife blade shaped by Kila flint knapper Tom Blais. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Tom Blais is bringing history to life one arrowhead at a time.
Growing up in Vermont, Blais heard many stories about the Native Americans that used to camp along the river near his family’s farm. Local lore said the Abénaki and Pennacook tribes used to make that area their home, but he never thought much about it until he found his first arrowhead along the river at age 10.
“I thought to myself, I could be the first person to touch it in a thousand years,” Blais said. “I wondered, who used it? What did they look like? What was the arrowhead used for? Did it help them survive?”
Curious about how the stone weapon was made, Blais began hitting rocks together in an attempt to recreate the process. While those early attempts did not produce much, years of trial and error, practice and learning have helped Blais become an expert flint knapper.
Using only traditional stone and bone tools, Blais, now a Kila resident, has produced more than 2,000 historically accurate stone weapons and tools over the past 20 years. From arrowheads and knives to drills and complete bow and arrow sets, his creations each exhibit a rustic beauty.
“Flint knapping is one thing that we all have in common. It’s something that all of our ancestors were doing at some point in cultures all across the world,” Blais said. “We all have it in our blood to want to pick up a rock and knock off a flake to use as a tool. I’m using the same technology to do the same thing our ancestors did for tens of thousands of years.”
Using hammer stones along with deer and moose antlers, Blais can turn a hand-sized piece of stone into a knife in less than an hour. What Blais makes almost easy took him countless hours to learn.
“It takes hundreds, if not thousands, of hours just to get the technique down, so it takes a lot of stone to learn how to do this. This isn’t something you can just pick up in a week,” he said. You go through so much stone. I am talking about hundreds and hundreds of pounds.”
WITH KNAPPABLE rock hard to come by, Blais says he would use any material he could find to practice when he started learning the craft 30 years ago, from broken glass to the porcelain from toilets.
With the rise of the internet, Blais soon found access to video tutorials and knappable rock from around the country and the world, turning his pastime into a true hobby.
With time, Blais learned the intricacies of many types of rock and can now recreate the work of Native American tribes from across the country using materials from chert and agate to quartz and obsidian.
“It’s all about precision and controlling the fracturing of a stone. You have to prepare the edge and hit it at just the right angle. You also have to know the stone because they all fracture differently,” he said. “Your accuracy has to be exact. If you miss by a millimeter, you can break the piece. It’s a chess match with a piece of stone.”
While Blais has sold or given away most of the pieces he has made over the years, he is constantly at work honing his skills by making new ones. He also enjoys passing his knowledge on to others, giving demonstrations and lessons at events like the Northwest Montana Rock Chucks annual gold, gem and mineral show in March and the Montana Sportsman’s Expo in February.
“I like teaching people to do it, both young and old,” he said. “When people actually sit down and take a flake of stone off and hear the sound it makes, they are usually hooked. It’s difficult to teach, but can also be a lot of fun.”
Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 406-758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.
