HARMONY – The old trapper propped a round, tan rock against his hide-covered knee and rapped it with a second stone, producing a cracking sound that brought a smile to his lined face. He removed a flake from the rock and held it up before a circle of admirers to reveal the smooth, gray interior. A hundred yards and two centuries away, the Harmony Free Fair midway swirled with primary colors, country music and the aroma of fried food.

Gomer the Trapper is the alternative persona of David Bryant, a carpentry foreman from the Kennebec County town of Mount Vernon who studies Colonial life as a member of The Ancient Ones of Maine, a re-enactment organization with some 75 members.

“This group is based on survival, not war,” said Bryant, contrasting The Ancient Ones with Revolutionary War re-enactment clubs.

A dozen or so members of The Ancient Ones, men, women and children, camped over Labor Day weekend on the Harmony Fairgrounds in a circle of handmade, white canvas tents. They made tools, clothing and barrels, flung tomahawks at wooden targets with rapid-fire precision, and cooked over open fires they started in seconds with flint and steel.

Each year, they perform three or four demonstration encampments similar to this one.

“We like to try to educate people about history, the history of the country. So many young people take it for granted that meat comes in a cellophane package and milk comes from a carton,” said Jim Boutilier of Bremen, a semiretired blacksmith and welder who portrays a Colonial blacksmith in a tricorn hat.

Bryant discovered The Ancient Ones 15 years ago at a fair. Curious about the cluster of white tents, he was astounded that the people in rustic clothing were actually living in them, and they invited him to their next meeting. He showed up in street clothes and felt right at home throwing axes and sleeping on the ground. He quickly evolved into Gomer, a rough long-hunter, or trapper, with leather britches, a bear-claw necklace, shoulder-length hair and a bushy mustache that conceals his mouth.

As he became more involved with the group, he wanted to learn a craft so he could make things to trade with other members. Stone arrowheads seemed like a natural choice, combining his passions for hunting and working with his hands with his ability to think visually.

After having no luck in his search for a teacher, Bryant learned the technique from videos and books and perfected it with practice. He shares his knowledge with anyone who asks, and dreams that one day someone will come back to him with a rock flaked into a point.

Today Bryant is an accomplished “flint knapper.” He can make a small arrowhead from volcanic glass in about half an hour. The same point takes him at least twice as long to fashion from flint.

He uses three simple tools: a hammer stone, which is an ordinary field rock that has a small end and feels right in his hand; a piece of moose antler for finer flakes; and a copper flaker that looks like a copper nail driven backward into a wooden handle. The end of the copper piece is hammered flat, compressing the molecules to harden it.

Each piece he makes begins with a nodule, a rounded rock with a limestone shell and a flint core. These nodules, or hornstones, form as sandstone settles around pockets of chert, which leaches into the sandstone to create the shell. Ninety percent of the nodule ends up in the waste pile in the process of making a single tool.

Bryant begins by cracking large pieces off the nodule to make a core, or a partially worked rock. He refines the shape with smaller flakes and finally takes off tiny flakes to create a razor-sharp, translucent cutting edge that can be as thin as two molecules.

On a nodule-hunting trip in Kentucky, he found a piece of tan stone that he carries with him everywhere. The partially worked core, about 6 inches by 2 inches, was lying on the ground beside the rock someone used to shape it some 10,000 years ago.

“I’m not really spiritual, but I feel something for the guy who started this, and this connection with the past goes with me,” Bryant said. “I’m going to finish it one day, and I think when I do, some guy will be glad I did.”