Red Sandstone Blues

Today I'm thinking that it may not be possible to get it done by Wednesday after all.

That confounded sandstone dulls the tooth and the flat chisels in less than five minutes.  I do have a couple of carbide-tipped chisels, which keep their edge longer, but they are tiny, and it will take me forever to smooth that big piece of red stone with those. 

I could give up on chisels and try to smooth the thing with a rasp--normally you work in the order:  point chisel, tooth chisel, flat chisel, rasp--but the sandstone will probably do a job on that too.

Meanwhile, I have a big bruise on my left-hand where I have hit myself with the mallet, and a feeling of weariness in my heart.

As I said when I started this whole thing, one should never rush, when carving stone.

Sandstone Countdown

A week from today, it will all be over:  I'll either have finished the stone piece, and submitted it for jurying, or not.

Today, the fourth day, started out badly.  Too much stone, not enough muscle.  Too much sheer volume to be hacked away before I could even contemplate matters of shape.  "Help, I need help," I kept muttering.  I mean, old-time sculptors had apprentices--whole shops of them--for the heavy work and the boring parts, like polishing.

And then it occurred to me:  I could use some help sharpening my tools.  Sandstone, you see, is terribly hard on tools.  After half an hour of carving, a chisel is as dull and ineffective as a slice of Wonder bread.  No matter how hard you whale away with your mallet and wear out your sinews,  nothing much happens on the stone.

I am a terrible tool sharpener.  If things are going well, if I've got some momentum going, stopping to sharpen tools is the last thing on my mind.  If things aren't going well, I'm too upset to even think of sharpening chisels. And when I do condescend to sharpen a tool, it feels my aggravation and remains stubbornly blunt.

I am, however, married to a man who excels at tool sharpening.  Not until I married him did I experience the bliss of slicing an apple with a truly sharp knife.  Until then, my family had always sort of hacked/smashed meats and fruits and vegetables into submission, and bloodshed was a standard part of cooking.  But once you've known the bliss of a sharp blade, you never forget it.

My breakthrough today was to realize that I could, without compromising my creativity, ask Ed to sharpen my tools.  So I did.  And  he agreed. 

I handed him a pile of chisels--point, tooth, flat,  carbide, and steel, and before I'd even put my dust mask and gloves and carving shirt and shoes on, he handed them back with knife-sharp edges.  I went to work with the point chisel, and the stone just flew--it felt like power steering, and so good that I whaled away for two and a half hours without stopping...at the end of which my two point chisels were blunt again.  So I handed them back to  him and he sharpened them once more, and now they're sitting on my workbench, shiny and pointy, waiting for tomorrow's session.

I suspect that by next Wednesday my chisels will be worn down to stubs, but I'm beginning to think that finishing the piece by then just might--Inshallah--be a possibility.

Tools, Glorious Tools

Today I got a package from England containing my slate-carving tools, and I am in heaven. The package contained one nylon mallet, weighing maybe half a pound; one beechwood mallet, weighing about the same as a large butterfly; one teensy (6mm across the tip) carbide-tipped chisel; and another chisel, even teensier (4mm).

Until now, I've been carving slate with the same tools I used to carve Indiana limestone, which is almost as hard as marble: big steel chisels, and mallets weighing as much as five pounds. I've said before that slate is like mineral fillo dough. Put a big chisel on it and whack it with a heavy mallet, and chips--noses, chins, eyelids--go flying everywhere.

But these small, light, sharp, super-precise tools give the most amazing control, so that carving slate is no scarier than carving any other stone, and a lot easier on the body. You put the tiny chisel on the surface of the stone, give it the lightest whack, and four specks of dust fly off: no harm done. Put the chisel down again, whack it lightly, and four more specks fly off. You're definitely getting somewhere. (Have I mentioned that one reason I love direct stone carving is that it is slooooow?)

The downside of slate is that it cannot be carved in the round. You can only do bas relief, which is kind of between sculpture and drawing. But, for a lover of line like me, that is not a downside at all.