DULUTH, Minn. – Dave Schorn sits on a stool, whacking a piece of Danish flint with a heavy copper shaft called a billet. Flakes and chunks of the stone fall to the floor.

It is not hard to imagine a native hunter centuries ago in the Arctic or the American West using the base of an antler to perform exactly the same act — the making of a spear point or an arrowhead.

One significant difference separates Schorn’s labors from that of the native hunter: The hunter’s life depended on that point.

Now modern-day flintknappers such as Schorn of Silver Bay and Al Anderson of Duluth carry on the centuries-old tradition, creating arrowheads, spear points, hunting knives and daggers.

The two men sit in Anderson’s semi-warm garage on a January night, each working a respective rock. Nearby are samples of their work, the hefty Danish daggers that Schorn is known for in knapping circles and the handsome arrowheads that Anderson fashions.

Each is working a separate piece now, and chips of rock litter the floor beneath them.

Whack. Another large flake of flint hits the floor. “It’s knowing where to hit,” Schorn said.

Creating a projectile point usually begins with this step, called direct percussion. Once the original stone is thin enough, Schorn or Anderson can put an edge on the stone by applying pressure with a pointed piece of copper or antler tine. That causes small flakes to come off the edge of the point, leaving a sharp edge that appears serrated. This finer work is called pressure flaking.

How sharp can such an edge get?

Schorn takes a piece of Anderson’s obsidian, a slick, black stone. He smacks it until he gets a thin flake. Using the edge of it, he makes several strokes on his wrist, removing all the hair and leaving only smooth skin behind.

“Obsidian is sharper than a man-made scalpel, better than any razor,” Schorn said.

Anderson discovered knapping about three years ago, when he came upon a flint-knapped knife at a summer festival in Ely. He bought it almost on the spot.

“I had to have that knife,” he said.

Soon after, he showed up at a “knap-in,” where flintknappers gather to admire each other’s work. Anderson asked if anyone taught the craft. Other knappers pointed him to Schorn, a kayak guide from Silver Bay. Anderson, a fisheries biologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources at Finland, quickly took to the craft under Schorn’s tutelage.

“He’s the only student who’s come this far,” Schorn said. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”

Now Anderson descends to his garage almost every evening to make points.

“It gets to be kind of addictive,” he said.

He finds that if he misses even a night or two, his skills begin to deteriorate. So, he rarely skips a night. Sometimes he’s on. Sometimes he isn’t. When he surfaces from the garage, his wife, Deb, is apt to ask him, “Well, did you make an arrowhead or did you make gravel?”

The appeal of arrowheads and projectile points is almost universal. Anyone lucky enough to stumble upon such an artifact considers it a prize. Anderson looked for arrowheads for years on his family farm in Kittson County. He never found one.

“Now I make my own,” he says.