KNAPPING STONE, ARROWHEADS, BLADES, KNIVES, AND SPEAR POINTS

As made very evident; in the above illustration, flint or stone knapping (even if you should be lucky enough to find some suitable stone--which is very unlikely and the prime reason why so many "stone" knappers practice on pieces of glass a material that like suitable stone, you are very unlikely to find much of in the bush; or in any other survival situation in which you think you might be called upon to do any napping) is lot of hard work, requiring a lot of skill, practice, and equipment. Even then, with everything necessary, you probably will not be able to actually produce a usable product. While ceramic, glass or stone tools hold an edge better and can be many times sharper than the sharpest razor or scalpel made from steel;  ceramic, glass, or stone is also very brittle and tends to chip or break quite easily.
Produced by the most skilled stone knappers, the very best ceramic, glass or stone blades are not really suited for chopping; which is why truly stone age peoples anywhere in the world, did not fall a lot of trees, build a lot of fences--or actually do that much building or construction of any kind, THAT REQUIRED USING STONE TOOLS TO CHOP.
Imagine the shock it must have been to the early European invaders to discover that the Aztec and Mayan peoples were able to build and construct--out of stone--(the finished product often, in many ways, superior, to any thing found in Europe at the time-- or even today for that matter)--using tools made only from wood and or bone. 
Any sharp piece of stone that is any where near sharp enough or thin enough  to be used as a tool will-- unless you are familiar with the little known technique of heat treating flint or stone-- also have a natural curve or hook

Heat Treating Flint

It is a well-known fact that flints may be used in fire-lighting but they should NOT be exposed to heating by direct fire. Stone fracturing can result from uneven expansion, causing fragmentation. To combat fragmentation, flint/chert should be “BAKED” (in an oven); slowly brought up to a temperature of 300 to 500 F, held there for 24 hours, and then—slowly—cooled to room temperature. This heating process makes the material more homogenous and thus more knappable producing a straighter cleaner, sharper cutting edge

Comparison of Natural Flint With Ferrocerium 

Use of flint and steel or iron pyrite should not be confused with the use of ferrocerium(also known as hot spark, metal match, or fore steel) which is a manmade material. When scraped with any hard, sharp edge it will produce a spark that is much hotter than that which is obtained with natural flint and steel. Because it will also produce sparks when wet and can start hundreds of fires when used correctly, ferrocerium is a common item included in commercial survival kits. Ferrocerium is also the material commonly used in cigarette and cigar lighters—but we usually call it “flint”, when so used

Any crude tool (such as those illustrated) will NOT have enough practical use (other than for puncturing or stabbing) to be worth the effort, don't waste your time.

Knapping is the shaping of CHERT (chert is a form of quartz with an exceedingly fine grain. Different types are called, flint, agate, and chalcedony. Obsidian, (a similar rock, forms from high-silica lava and is the best knapping stone of all), or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, or in some cases for the construction of buildings. It takes years of practice, and you cut your hands a lot until you become an expert.
Flintknapping or Knapping: is done in a variety of ways depending on the purpose of the final product. For stone tools and flintlock strikers, chert is worked using a fabricator such as a hammerstone to remove lithic flakes from a nucleus or core of tool stone. Stone tools can then be further refined using wood, bone, and antler tools to perform pressure flaking.
For building work a hammer or pick is used to split chert nodules supported on the lap. Often the chert nodule will be split in half to create two cherts with a flat circular face for use in walls constructed of lime. More sophisticated knapping is employed to produce almost perfect cubes which are used as bricks.There are many different methods of shaping stone into useful tools. Early knappers could have used simple hammers made of wood or antler to shape stone tools.
Hard hammer techniques are used to remove large flakes of stone. Early knappers and hobbyists replicating their methods often use cobbles of very hard stone, such as quartzite. This technique can be used by flint knappers to remove broad flakes that can be made into smaller tools. This method of manufacture is believed to have been used to make some of the earliest stone tools ever found, some of which date from over 2 million years ago.

Pressure Flaking: involves removing narrow flakes along the edge of a stone tool. This technique is often used to do detailed thinning and shaping of a stone tool. Pressure flaking involves putting a large amount of force across a region on the edge of the tool and (hopefully) causing a narrow flake to come off of the stone. Modern hobbyists often use pressure flaking tools with a copper or brass tip, but early knappers could have used antler tines or a pointed wooden punch; traditionalist knappers still use antler tines and copper-tipped tools. The major advantage of using soft metals rather than wood or bone is that the metal punches wear down less and are less likely to break under pressure.Soft hammer techniques are more precise than hard hammer methods of shaping stone. Soft hammer techniques allow a knapper to shape a stone into many different kinds of cutting, scraping, and projectile tools.

Uses

In cultures that have not adopted metalworking technologies, the production of stone tools by knappers is common, but in modern cultures the making of such tools is the domain of experimental archaeologists and hobbyists. Archaeologists usually undertake the task so that they can better understand how prehistoricstone tools were made.Knapping is sometimes learned by outdoorsmen, supposedly as a survival tactic.

As a Hobby: if you happen to own one of those souvenir shops, specializing in "AUTHENTIC"--mostly made in China--Native North American curios it COULD become quite profitable.
Knapping for the supply of strikers for flintlock firearms was a major industry in flint bearing locations, such as Brandon in Suffolk, England, where knappers made strikers for export to the Congo as late as 1947 (some are still produced for the "black powder/muzzle loader" crowd).

Knapping for building purposes is still a skill that is practised in the flint-bearing regions of southern England, such as Sussex, Suffolk and Norfolk, and in northern France, especially Brittany and Normandy, where there is a resurgence of the craft due to government funding.

©Al ( Alexander) D Girvan 1995-2012