• A granite gravestone

    Latest projects, Ov1

    Usually I do not write about the sculptures I execute for other sculptors, because it's their design and I can not go showing off with their work. But last month, I carved a granite tombstone to the design of sculptor Gerard Overeem. He was satisfied with the result and was happy with me mentioning it on this blog.
    The design is based on one of his early works, in possession of the customer.

    Cutting and Measuring

    sawing 5

    Gerard supplied me with the plaster model and a block of granite to size, on which I first started cutting away the excess. When all the unnecessary volumes were removed, I started measuring the relief of Mother and Child with compasses and transferred it into the granite.

    Finally, I copied all the "brute’ planes approximately. These didn't have to be copied literally, making this a lot easier to carve.

    tombstone, granite and model
    Granite and gypsum next to each other

    Surface finishing

    I have given the different areas of the sculpture various finishes: on the flat faces a chisel stroke with a narrow chisel, which I kept turning round. On the relief of mother and child the same thing, but with a much finer finish, so no roughness would hinder the depiction. Finally I carved lines with a toothed chisel on the 'brute’ surfaces at the bottom and at the rear.

    The finished granite gravestone
    The finished granite gravestone
    back
    back

    The attentive viewer will see that I have kept the womb and belly of the mother a bit fuller, these are some of those small changes that will be carried out after consultation.

    Master signs

    All in all a nice commission in between, also because I like to work in granite . In this case it was Spanish Rosa Porriño, a bit pinkish with little grey dots.

    Next week, the stone goes to the stonemason's shop, where the text will be added.

    A nice detail is that Gerard and I both carved our 'master sign’ into the side of the granite, with the consent of the client, of course. This goes back to a medieval tradition, when the stonemason signed each piece with his own stonemason's mark, that was used for quality control and, for counting production, during payout. So this gives a historical perspective as well.

    Nasty the first message about this project.

  • 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.

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