Flint Marble Making

Poster for the main event

While we were there we were invited to visit a number of homes, some of which had their own ‘Marble yards’ and other venues like the ‘Monroe County Marble Club Super Dome’ in Kentucky. One of our trips was to Malcolm Strong’s marble yard, in Moss, Tennessee; here we were shown the process of producing local ‘Flint’ Marbles.
The hand made marbles of local ‘Flint’ which is a silica-based mineral like quartz and obsidian, is found in many colours, each shade has its special characteristics:

Yellow Flint - clearer yellow flint is the most highly prized by players and the toughest flint with the greatest density.

Red Flint – is the most highly prized for its beauty, but always too brittle for game use.

Brown Flint - is favoured by some players because it blends with the colour of the marble yard and is harder for opponents to see.

White Flint – is a lightweight flint, but favoured by some champions like Russell Collins because they can see it easily on the yard, or they just ‘like the looks of it’. Grey & Black Flint – few play with marbles from this material, though it is fairly common and of a good density, but considered unattractive.

Flint marbles from my collection

My friend Travis Cherry told me that the colour varies from white to yellow and sometimes a reddish colour and this is just down personal choice
My wife Julia was on hand as official photographer for the trip and took all the pictures in this article.
The marble maker looked around to find a suitable piece of ‘flint’ to use in making the marble. This was then knocked into a rough cube shape ready for the main work to commence.
The initial shaping took place on a mobile diamond-grinding wheel, at first it was held by hand until the uneven corners are ground away. When the flint was to hot to handle it was held in a pair if stillsons until the marble maker was happy that it was ready for the next stage in the process.
The course flint was then turned into a sphere using a rubber wheel on the other end of the grind-wheel and a carbarundum stone, which had half a spherical hole in it. Once the flint was rounded and to the right ‘shooting’ size it was polished in much the same way as above, but using a block of sandstone instead of carbarundum.
At this stage the polished sphere looked ready for use but there was to be one more operation before the marble was finished. While still quite hot it was dropped into a can of old motor oil, after a few minutes it was removed with a wonderful satin feel. The last picture shows the finished marble, which I still have in my collection and yes it still has that wonderful satin feel to it.
There were two different marble makers one was Calley Strong the son of Junior B and the other was Kent Smith. They both used a grind wheel mounted on a board that was kept in the back of a pick up truck. I have seen other demonstration where there have been guards on and around grind wheel, but I feel that what I saw was the old way and it was good to see a living tradition being practice.

Picture 1
The flint is knocked into a cube

Picture 2

Picture 2 & 3 show the initial shaping by hand of the rough cube.

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 7 shows the flint marble is polished in a sandstone block.

Picture 6 shows the rough sphere is rounded in the carbarundum stone

The Finished ‘Flint’ marble

Tennessee Marble Mill