Remember how they got the stone door to open to the mines of Moria? The old elvish runes simply said "Say Friend To Open The Door" ... Enter here to play the Game, Friend.
From the time when I was 11 or 12 in the forested foothills of the western Oregon Willamette Valley and found my first arrowhead, an obsidian "bird point", in a field my dad had plowed for an experimental crop of maize, I have always wondered about the people who used these stone tools, and how they produced them.
When I found a chip of obsidian in a roadside park along the McKenzie River upstream from Springfield on a day trip to the mountains I decided to attempt to make my own arrowhead.
That first point, with the broken wings of its base, still sits somewhere in an old footlocker, along with a collection of several dozen points and blades.
I eventually discovered that the world wide web has made wide spread connections to top quality stone more readily available than ever was dreamed of by the ancient, foot-weary practitioners of this fascinating craft. It also makes available to the student a wonderful range of teachers and mentors, who are dedicated to making certain that the hard-won skills which have been rediscovered by chance, study and experimentation over the past century or so are not soon lost.