Carving Stone Peter Coates July 6, 2015 2 Contents 1 Why This Book? 7 2 Origins 13 2.0.1 The Tool Kit . 13 2.0.2 Stone . 15 2.0.3 Metal . 19 2.1 The Ancient Carvers . 20 2.1.1 The Drill . 26 2.1.2 The Pressures of Commerce . 29 3 The Materials 33 3.1 Hardness and Toughness . 33 3.2 Weathering . 35 3.2.1 Rain . 36 3.2.2 Acidity . 37 3.3 Carvable Stones . 38 3.3.1 The Carbonate Stones . 38 3.3.2 Granite, Basalt, and Related Stones . 42 3.3.3 Soapstone . 46 3.3.4 Serpentine . 46 3.3.5 Alabaster . 49 3.3.6 Sandstone . 52 3.3.7 Slate . 53 3.3.8 African Wonder Stone (Pyrophyllite) . 55 4 Lifting and Handling 57 4.0.9 Moving Egyptian Style . 58 4.0.10 Rolling a Block . 60 4.0.11 Block-and-Tackle . 62 4.0.12 Chain Fall . 63 4.0.13 Come-Along . 64 4.0.14 Engine Pulling Hoist . 65 4.0.15 Hydraulic Work Stand . 65 4.0.16 Lazy Susan . 65 3 4 CONTENTS 4.0.17 Cradles . 66 4.0.18 Sand Bags . 67 4.0.19 Dropping a Stone . 67 5 Dividing Stones 71 5.1 Sawing . 71 5.2 Splitting With Chisels . 73 5.3 Splitting With Wedges . 74 5.3.1 Flaws . 79 5.3.2 Combining Sawing and Wedging . 79 6 Manual Carving Tools 83 6.1 Carbide vs. Steel . 83 6.2 Traditional Hand Tools . 85 6.2.1 Hammers and Mallets . 85 6.2.2 Punches . 86 6.2.3 Pick . 92 6.2.4 Tooth Chisel (Claw Chisel) . 92 6.2.5 Flat Chisels . 96 6.2.6 Cape Chisel . 99 6.2.7 Mushrooms . 99 6.2.8 Drills . 100 6.2.9 Running Drill . 101 6.2.10 Pitching Tool . 102 6.2.11 Tracing Tool . 103 6.2.12 Bull Hammer and Splitting Hammer . 103 6.2.13 Bush Hammer . 104 6.2.14 Hard Stone . 108 6.2.15 Rasps, Rifflers and Files . 108 6.2.16 Modeling The Surface Without a Hammer . 108 7 Power Tools 115 7.0.17 The Pneumatic Hammer . 115 7.0.18 Compressors . 118 7.0.19 Maintenance . 120 7.0.20 Tool Operation . 121 7.0.21 Rotary Grinders . 121 7.0.22 Drills . 129 8 Abrasives 133 8.1 Finishing Marble . 133 8.1.1 Traditional Marble Finishing Sequence . 135 8.1.2 Oxalic Acid and Other Chemical Sealers . 136 8.2 Modern Sandpaper . 136 8.3 Rotary Stones and Wheels . 138 8.4 Finishing Hard Stones . 138 CONTENTS 5 9 From Start to Finish 139 9.1 Planning . 139 9.2 Roughing-Out . 140 9.2.1 Flattening the Bottom . 140 9.2.2 Knocking Off Big Pieces . 143 9.2.3 Using the Punch . 143 9.2.4 Coarse Tooth Chisel . 145 9.2.5 Fine Tooth Chisel . 147 9.3 The Final Carved Surface . 148 9.3.1 Undercuts . 148 9.3.2 Flat Chisels and Roundels . 149 9.3.3 A Step Backwards . 149 9.3.4 The Finest Carving . 149 9.3.5 Finishing . 153 10 Repairs and Cleaning 157 10.1 Breakage . 157 10.1.1 Super Glue . 158 10.1.2 Filling Glues . 158 10.2 Major Breaks . 159 10.3 Cleaning . 161 11 Miscellaneous Issues in Carving 163 11.1 Struts . 164 11.2 Eyes . 168 11.3 Flesh . 170 11.4 Multiple Pieces . 173 11.5 The Drill . 176 11.6 Indirect Carving . 181 11.6.1 Direct vs. Indirect . 182 11.7 Naturalism and Verisimilitude . 193 11.8 Viewpoints . 198 12 Indirect Techniques 199 12.1 Copying Frame . 199 12.1.1 Alberti's Method . 200 12.2 The Use of Three Compasses . 202 12.2.1 Alternate Method . 204 12.3 Pointing Machines . 204 12.4 The Pointing Machine Updated . 208 12.5 Computer Numeric Controld (CNC) Carving . 208 13 Building a Pointing Machine 211 13.0.1 Marking and Drilling the Connectors . 212 6 CONTENTS 14 Making Tools 219 14.1 Tools to Make . 223 15 Safety and Comfort 225 15.1 Lungs . 225 15.1.1 Clean Air . 228 15.1.2 Eyes . 229 15.1.3 Hands, Fingers, and Feet . 230 15.1.4 Vibration Hazards . 232 15.1.5 Grinders . 233 15.1.6 Skin . 234 15.1.7 Compressed Air Hazards . 234 15.1.8 It Seems Too Obvious to Say, But . 235 16 A Catalogue of Sculptors of Stone 237 16.1 Under Construction: About 20 sections on significant eras in sculpture follow. 237 17 Glossary 239 Chapter 1 Why This Book? Artists have been carving the figure in stone for tens of thousands of years, and critics were already pronouncing on it centuries before books were invented. What could possibly be left to say? A lot, actually. The history of what happened in Western culture over the last violent century would fill a library, and learned authors disagree about nearly all of it, but one thing you can safely say is that the Twentieth Century destroyed and remade just about everything pertaining to sculpture: the sub- jects, the styles, the media, who made it and for whom, even the meaning of the word itself. Carving in stone has barely begun to be reconciled to these rev- olutions, and everything about sculpture, from the aesthetics to the mechanics, continues to be in flux. Figurative carving in the West, already vigorous, flowered in the late Vic- torian and Edwardian eras, from the 1880's to the outbreak of the First World War. The period has probably never been surpassed, either in terms of sheer technical virtuosity, or in the number of sculptors working1. In the last decades of the old order, the ancient traditions were still vibrant, and the burgeoning 1 The subject tends to get short shrift in histories of this period because, as we look back, the big story of the era seems to be Modernism, which was then gathering steam, and would become the direct forerunner of the visual arts of today. It is easy to lose sight of the fact the Academy was decidedly center stage until well into the Twentieth Century, and Modernism the minor player in all of the plastic arts, but particularly in sculpture. In 1912, at age 31, five years after he had painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Picasso's London dealer was still selling his works for between two and twenty English pounds|as little as a workman's weekly pay. The work of Henri Matisse.