Getting rid of hinge flakes.

Hinge or step flakes drive me nuts, you can prep a platform perfectly but if the blow is a bit weak or at the wrong angle , or indeed delivered too hard (as with hard hammerstones) you will get a hinge with will take some work to knap out, and then more often than not you end up stacking up more hinge flakes trying to rectify the first boo boo.
So if you chaps out there have any good solutions lets here them!

[img][/img]
Here is one of my solutions to the hinge flake, this tool started out as a notcher made with a floor board nail at one end and a horse shoe nail at the other end, with 9mm copper pipe in the middle as a handle, the heads of the nails where cut off and the copper pipe hammered down and soldered in tho the nails. As the nails are now too short for notching it now deals with those peskey hinges...

[img][/img]Side view, showing the ends filed to a chisle like angle.

[img][/img]
And an annoying hinge about to get what's coming to it! The tool is just to placed on to show how it should sit against the hinge, don't try to remove a flake with it facing this way up, it's only for illustration.

[img][/img]
Get your palm pad out and pressure flake that sod off using the hinge face as a platform.

[img][/img]And that's better than before, work along the length of the hinge untill there is nothing left to grab on to. I usually refer to this a "picking on". I hope this helps.

Sorry, typo: as "picking on"!

I use a very similar solution, I bought a small steel masonary chisel from B&Q. I lay the piece on the floor on its side, brace it, stick the chisel in the hinge and give it a good wallop with a hammer.

Here an example on the white one top left note right in the centre a huge flake that appears to start on the right an inch in and travel left. Those small flakes right middle aren't very long and one hinged. I put the chisel in the hinge as above and took that long flake out.

That does the job nicely! I tried long ago to remove a hinge with a nail punch and a hammer and got an alarmingly deep negative bulb right in the middle as a result, a wider punch/pressure tip in this situation seems to work a treat, diffuse bulb etc.
Shopping list: small masonary chisel...