• Thomas Aquinas, part 2: sawing

    Restoration, Saint John's Cathedral
    Thomas Aquinas, part 2: sawing. Two large sandstone blocks
    1. Two large sandstone blocks of Udelfanger sandstone: 1 for the statue of Thomas Aquinas, 1 for Serge's angel

    Two large blocks

    The work on the on copy of the statue of Thomas Aquinas has finally started. I had received two large blocks of Udelfanger sandstone some time earlier: one destined to make two angels out of it and one block from which I had to carve the two parts of the statue of St. Thomas from St John's Cathedral in Den Bosch, The Netherlands and fit them together. So the first step was to divide both blocks into two with the diamond chainsaw.

    Presawing Thomas

    After that I put one block on my copying saw or contour sawing machine and started presawing Thomas' lower half. The dividing line of the two parts was meant to be near the line of his hood, so that

    it's almost invisible. Reminder: in an earlier post I wrote that the old statue was made from a single piece of stone, in which the layers run vertically. Because it's more desirable that the layers run through the statue horizontally (in that case, there's less chance that an entire big slice comes falling down at once, after weathering) it will be different in this copy. But the quarry has no banks in which the stone is higher than 120 cms wide. Therefore, the head was to be made from a separate piece.

    Thomas. Aquinas, part 2: sawing. I halved the block with the diamond chainsaw
    2. The block is cut in half with the chainsaw
    Thomas Aquinas, part 2: sawing. Presawing the lower body
    3. Sawing the lower body

    Because of the large color differences between separate blocks of Udelfanger sandstone I was sent a very large block from which I had to cut the two parts. From this I made the body and the head of Thomas.

    Thomas Aquinas, part 2: sawing. Upper body presawed.
    4. The upper body was cut from the second half
    Thomas Aquinas, part 2: sawing. Rough carving the head and body
    5. The head and the body are roughly carved

    Fitting together of the two parts

    Then, the two pre-sawn parts of the head and body had to be made to fit to each other snugly. That wasn't so easy, because the dividing line doesn't run straight. It follows the wavy line of the hood and needs to be higher at the right hand, because otherwise the joint seam would run through the knuckles. These inclined faces need to fit together well. For this, it should first be clear what will be located where, and for that I needed to rough carve the two parts for quite a ways. I carved the upper body and the lower body so that I could see where it all would be going, and I could see where the dividing line was to run. Then I could find the joint surfaces.

    Thomas Aquinas, part 2: sawing. Making both planes fit
    6. The joint surfaces are being made to fit
    Thomas. Aquinas, part 2: sawing. The head and body are bonded.
    7. the two parts are bonded together

    Joint surface

    Because I made this joint line visible on both pieces, I could demarcate the joint surface and carve away the excess stone. By keeping on fitting the pieces together and scribing the excess stone, I could ultimately achieve a tight seam. When the fit was tight enough, I scribed off where I wanted to put the stainless steel pins and drilled four holes. Two holes in each piece, so I could adhere both parts with strong epoxy glue and two thick threaded rods. Also, the joint plane itself was bonded with a suitable breathable mortar. You should actually never make a horizontally extending closed off gluing surface on a statue sitting outside. The stone above such a dense glue layer can't lose its moisture and will start to rot right above the glue seam.

    Serge's angel

    Copying an angel for St. John's Cathedral
    The other block was halved as well. From the one half this angel was presawn for Serge

    My colleague Serge had an commission in Udelfanger sandstone as well for St. John's Cathedral in Den Bosch. He was asked to copy this angel. He had previously made one and asked me if I wanted to saw this one as well. Jelle did a perfect job for him.

    Read more about the continuation of this project in the next post.

  • Ornaments for Utrecht's Domkerk and St John's Cathedral 2

    Dom Church, Utrecht, Eusebius, Restoration, Saint John's Cathedral

    Finial

    As you may perhaps remember: I last year I carved ornaments a few times and even made some stonemasonry work for St. John's Cathedral in 's-Hertogenbosch. The blog posts can be found under the following headings: Stonemasonry work and ornaments for St. John's Cathedral, Finally another update! and Ornamental work for the Utrecht Dom Church and St. John's.

    I recently got a new batch of ornamental work in the yard again, including another identical finial block for the same buttress finial of St. John's Cathedral. The first block I carved in its entirety myself, including the stonemasonry parts.

    pallet with ornamental work in the yard of the sculptor's workshop

    The second block was precarved by stonemason Mike Slotboom from Slotboom Steenhouwers in Winterswijk and the ornamental work was done by my colleague Serge. The third block was carved by three young stonemasons from Slotboom Stonemasons, who have all done their terrific best, and I carved the ornaments again: the crockets.

    Together with my colleagues

    sculotor's workshop with many projects

    For larger projects, I work with my colleagues Stide Vos and Serge van Druten. We were all trained as restoration sculptors at our former employer's Beeldhouwerij Mooy in Amersfoort. There, we worked together for about 15 years, so we know each other really well and get along famously.

    Self-employed in the sculptor's workshop

    We've continued all three as independent restoration sculptors, but keep in contact regularly, because it is such an incredibly small world. For this branch, the carving of ornaments and statues in new stone for mainly churches and castles, there are now still three restoration sculptors working fulltime. To my knowledge. It has always been a small group and that's never been a lot larger; there are times when all the work seems to come all at once and times when we really do not have enough work to keep all of us going. That's why we do other work as well, such as autonomous sculptures, reliefs, bronze statues, house signs, repairs, burial monuments, work for other sculptors and much more.

    Recently, Jelle Steendam has come to work in the beeldhouwerij to help alleviate the pressure and increase his knowledge at the same time. So that makes four in the Netherlands. There are of course many other sculptors in stone and I also know a few other restoration sculptors, but I rarely encounter these within my own genre

    Dom Cathedral

    overview West Facade of South Chapel of Dom church Utrecht
    Wherever the numbers are the side crockets are to be replaced

    At this time we're mainly working together on sculptural- and ornamental work for the Utrecht Cathedral and the Eusebius Church in Arnhem. Serge and Stide in particular have made many tuffstone side crockets for the Dom cathedral already, but in between all of the other work I also managed to carve a few flowers in tuff myself. On the right is a picture of the three Gothic pointed arch facades, with a triangular frame above it. Along that frame, 12 crocket flowers are mounted, and with two and a half façade that makes 30 crocket flowers in all. One doesn't count, so we'll need to make 29. This is just a fraction of what you can find on this beautiful church.

    Gallery

    Snow

    It was cold in the sculptor's workshop, but it's beautiful, and we can dress to the occasion. As long as we can warm up again during breaks we'll be fine.

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