• Four pieces at a time….

    Ov1, PP2, sculpture, vM

    Panipitha

    This past week I spent time working on four different projects at once, all of a different nature. First of all, the work on temperanceblack, square panipeetha just goes on. I've already shaped the top side and started sculpting the last four sides with the Lotus Motif.

    • upper side of black granite paanipeetham is polished. Shivalinga+yoni
    • upper side of black granite paanipeetham is polished. shivalinga +yoni

    It has been an enormous amount of manual work, especially because I could only polish by hand the rounded profile that lies deep in the middle of the block, and the same was true for a large portion of the top. The hole where the lingam has to go I mainly had to cut with a diamond saw, and because the material is so hard, that was almost a day's work for just the hole! But now it's coming along very nice. In the pictures there is a lot of dust and sludge on it, but the whole upper part is already polished deep black to grit 10.000.

    Nasty the first message over dit Panipitha project.
    Nasty the next post over Panipitha     this project.

    Contract work for others

    Then I have two projects in progress for other sculptors: the previously mentioned tombstone, and a bluestone relief.

    • cutting granite with angle grinder, phase 2
    • splitting a block of stone with drill holes and splitting chisels

    Splitting Dolomite

    Finally, I started modelling, to make a stone statue of a brick layer, about which more later. For that, I also split a block of stone, Dolomite or Anröchter Grünstein. Basically, you need to have special sets of feathers and wedges, but I don't own one (they are also rather pricey, and you would soon need something like 15 of them). But not to worry, I made up my own variant. I bought a set of thin wide chisels out of chrome vanadium. I've noticed that splitting goes fine with those when I insert them into the cut. Because the block is 50 cms thick, I drilled a series of holes with the diamond drill (which goes a lot faster than using a hammer drill), sawed a deep cut on three sides, and 10 chisels in the top cut .

    By then giving each chisel a tap until it's snug, and then hitting every chisel again, back and forth, the stone begins to crack at a certain moment. Just wait a little to give the stone time to crack, hit a few times more, and then it breaks-off splendidly! Also works well with concrete demolition, when there's no rebar in it. I first lifted the block up a bit and inserted a piece of angle iron under it, with the tip of the V pointing upwards, making it break in half nicely down the line.

    To the next post about this dolomite project.

  • Cutting granite with an angle grinder

    Ov1

    Every once in a while I will carve a sculpture for another sculptor. This Saturday I started sawing a hefty block of granite for a tombstone. Because it's not my own design I will not say too much about it, but I can write something about the process.

    cutting granite with an angle grinder

    I started with a rectangular block of granite. When you need to cut away large pieces of stone with a angle grinder, it will be easiest to cut a number of parallel lines, as deep as the blade can get. Then, if you hit it with a lump hammer (club hammer, as they're also called) and give a number of blows next to each other on the side of the pre-cut strip, while moving back and forth over the entire length of the strip , it's possible to loosen a whole strip’ at a time. In the picture above you can see it well.

    I prefer to cut granite with water added, it helps against dust and overheating. The large pieces I just cut with an ordinary diamond blade , because it doesn't splash as much. Finally, I will cut the faces flush with a special flat blade, and that saves a lot of work during carving later on. Otherwise I would have ended up with a huge rough surface, that I would have had to carve flat with an (air) hammer and chisel.

    Today I made some good progress, by mid-day, the volumes were already becoming clear.

    sawing a granite gravestone with an angle grinder

    Nasty the next post about this project.

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