About me - Robert Killgo

robertkillgo@flintknappers.com

Robert has been interested in wildlife, wilderness survival, and Indian tools and weapons since basically birth.  He has always loved arrowheads and while young used to look at them and wonder "how'd they do that??"  With some help, he made his first arrowhead around 1991.  He has been bustin rock off and on since then.  As a "newbie" knapper, he used whatever he could get his hands on at first, mostly broken glass shards, but found heaven at his first knapp-in with all he previous "master's" discards.  You see, back when Robert began knapping, you had to be around other knappers long enough for them to get to know you, and know they could trust you, before they would show you where to collect the precious, raw flints.   Until other master knappers befriended him at the knapp-ins, he therefore would go to the flint "trash" piles and collect the pieces the other knappers no longer wanted to work with.  He learned very quickly how to make 'gold from sand', so to speak.    He 'cut his teeth' on better knapper's trash, and credits his present skills to learning how to knapp the hard way!  Even after all these years of flintknapping, and presently having access to the best materials around the world, including exotic flints like flint from Israel, Robert still collects trash pieces at knapp-ins to turn in to points and show others the "scrap" they are tossing away is not really scrap.   Starting with selling his glass arrowheads so many years ago, Robert has been a commercial knapper all of his knapping life, and began making eccentrics a few years later, after seeing his first Mayan beauty in a picture.  He also quickly began using the Flake-Over-Grind method early and enjoys that aspect of his knapping career as well.   Robert's favorite materials are anything colorful which flakes good (of course), but also, and in complete opposition to many other modern day knappers, just plain-jane flints like Ft. Hood, Georgetown blue, Georgetown Black, Oklahoma Black, and others.  Basically, as in the picture above, if it will flake good and display the flake scars easily, he likes it.  He also prefers solid colored flints for the Mayan eccentrics he loves to make.