My desire to make things with my hands has recently lead me to look to the vast quantities of stone I have on my land. Everything from huge granite outcrops to large veins of quartz, to monsterous hunks of mica.
In was in a rock shop yesterday, unlike any I have ever been in, it has the simplest rock carved bowls, vases, you name it, that I have ever seen. And I would love to knwo what tools I would need to make things like bird bathes, simple bowls etc…etc… Call me primal, but I’d love to eat my morning cheerios out of a small granite bowl.
Any ideas? Cold chisles? Power tools? I’m just not sure?..
If you have a Michael’s craft store nearby, go into the aisle where they sell clays. You’ll find some chisels and mallets that are not expensive, and in truth not all that good, but definitely adequate for experimenting until you have a grasp on the way stonecarving works.
Also, in the Flax Art catalogue, you can find a beginner’s stone carving kit. It’s designed for kids, but it’s not so cutesy that you’d be embarrassed to show your work.
Hmm… granite and quartz. You are aware that these are among the hardest rocks that exist right? I have a feeling you aren’t going to get far with traditional hand carving tools that really work best with relatively soft rocks like marble. If you do start with hand tools, you’ll need carbide tipped chisels at least.
If you can find a local shop that makes grave markers and headstones, they will be able to tell you how to get started with granite.
Good idea on going to a monument maker…carbide tipped chisles huh…Hmmm. And yes I know granite and quartz are some of the hardest stones. We also have quite a bit of river rock that can be used, and some of it is sedimentary…I probably wouldn’t use that stuff though.
Another idea for you. We have lots of nice soapstone in this state, and it’s probably easier to learn the skill on that than starting on granite. Carved and polished soapstone can be quite beautiful.
Philster - thats brilliant! She understand sales. To the highest degree! And what a sale we have right in our back yard! :dubious:
paperbackwriter - I recently went on a nice hike in Hebron that boasted “soap stone out-crops” I should have paid more heed to that sign…But then again I guess it’s worth another hike in Hebron to get some samples… Thanks
Soapstone is very soft and very easy to carve, but some soapstone has natural asbestos in it, so it is not healthy for carving. Soapstone sold for carving use is typically quarried from a low-asbestos area and tested as well. And soapstone is useless for anything but untouched carvings; you can scratch it with your fingernail. It won’t work for a bowl you would want to use.
To carve stone like the ancients did, use a hammer and chisel. To make pretty things easily, use powered grinding tools. The only exception to this is if you need to remove a lot of rock fast; then you use a gouge–a chisel with a single-pointed tip.
There’s really two ways to grind: wet and dry. Wet grinding can’t be done with electric tools, so you need air tools–and you need special air tools, that are waterproof. You only find these for rock sculpting use, and they are very expensive. They have a water feed that keeps the rock dust down and cools the rock and the wheel as you work.
Cheap grinding tools: for dry grinding get a 4-1/2-inch angle grinder ($50) with a silicon carbide wheel ($2) for bigger removal, and a 1/4" shaft die grinder with silicon carbide bits for smaller removal. For dry grinding, you must also always wear a respirator (and get a good one, $50+)–no rock dust is good for your lungs.
Dremel tools aren’t much good for grinding; they are cheap but too low-powered for anything but detailed work, but aren’t concentric enough to do that well either. For dry-grinding small statues, you will want to get a Foredom tool ($350+).
The problem with any kind of dry grinding is that you must do it much slower than wet grinding, because with dry grinding the rock will heat up in the area being ground, and tend to crack.
Also, it helps to get real art stone. You can chop on any rock you pull from the ground, except that you should not be surprised if they are stratified heavily and crack apart where you don’t want them to, or they may contain a lot of very-hard minerals that wear down tools fast. Alabaster is often but not always a bit softer than marble, if you want something easy to work with.
You might get online on a sculpting board and give your general location and ask what art stone is quarried nearest to you, so that you can drive there and buy some and take it home yourself. The reason is that ordering art stone is murderous to your wallet; the shipping will often cost half as much as the stone. A cubic foot of marble weighs 160 lbs.
Common-grade marble (for example: salvaged building stone, countertops/windowsills and gravestone markers) will tend to contain fieldspar, and fieldspar is harder than any steel. If you hit a piece of fieldspar with your expensive chisel you know it, because your chisel will have a new nick in the edge and the fieldspar won’t. Fieldspar sparks yellow when hit with silicon-carbide grinding tools; the fieldspar is a bit harder than the silicon carbide, but the bit will usually shatter the fieldspar and it will fall out.
And some of the swirliest, prettiest marble you will see is LOADED with fieldspar. The more swirled the marble is, the more impossible it becomes to really work at all with chisels. This marble can only really be worked well by wet-diamond grinding tools–which is also what you really need to work granite or quartz well, too. Granite can be chiseled with facing chisels, but you don’t have much control over details with that technique.
If you want to try “stone” sculpting cheaply, you can make and use blocks of plaster yourself. You can even get staining coloring and swirl “veins” through it while wet, though they may not look exactly genuine. Forget about using any kind of concrete; even the softest commercially-available concrete is considerably harder than typical marble would be. The reason is not that concrete is all that harder than other stone, just that in practical applications it is denser: most natural stones are at least somewhat porous, and concrete tends to cure mostly-solid.
