Baby's inside!

Okay, that's it for outside carving for this year. I brought the marble inside today and I can now work on it anytime I want. Lori and I are heading for Chicago tomorrow to check out some galleries to represent us, so I most likely will not get back to stone work until sometime next week. Before I do, I've got to produce another metal piece as a donation, this time for the Buchanan Center for the Arts in Monmouth. I'll try to get a photo of it before delivery on Tuesday.

Big change today

I've decided that since my stone is now cut down to a weight that I can hope to move, and since I'm really tired of waiting for the rain to stop, I'm moving inside. However, since I'll be needing my pneumatic hammer/chisels, I needed to route the airline out of
the garage and into the house. I decided to use 1-1/2" PVC tubing for this and it went together without incident. The hose is routed through the PVC into the house, over to my indoor stone studio and drops down from the ceiling. I know that I can get the marble piece downstairs, and I'm hoping to get someone over to help me lift it up onto the carving bench. Looks like I'm not going to be carving in the snow!

I'm there!

Don't have to wait for nice weather any more - I managed to get the stone onto a scale and it's just under 90 lbs. So, I'll be able to get it down to my indoor stone studio any time I want. This weekend has yielded a lot of progress and I'm guessing the final weight of the piece will be around 70-80 lbs., so at least I'll be able to move the thing. As soon as I get it inside, I'm going to work on routing my air house through PVC pipe through a couple of walls so that I can continue to work efficiently (if Lori can stand all the racket the pneumatic hammer makes, that is). I won't do any grinding inside though - too much dust. By the way, my Adult Pull-Toy ended up being a sort of litmus test at last night's art center event and art auction. People in possession of a functioning sense of humor uniformly loved it. The others? Well . . .

A different sort of project

I'm sick of talking about the weather, and since the forecast shows rain every day for the next week, I'll focus on inside projects. I'm posting one more photo of the marble piece (yesterday's progress), and also a photo showing three views of an aluminum piece that I'm submitting as a donation for the auction at this weekend's art center fundraiser. It's about 8" high and is called, "Passive/Aggressive Device: Adult Pull-Toy". I have no idea how this will be received by the community . . .

And one more session this week . . .

The photos show what progress I made today. At this point I'm confident that I'll be able to get this stone inside for finishing, and that's a big relief. It is definitely showing an anthropomorphic character at the moment. Even I can see that, and I know what it's going to look like in its final form – not really suggestive of the human form.

Two days in a row!

It's really nice to be in a streak of good weather for a change. Got quite a bit done today and am looking forward to tomorrow. I'd estimate the weight of the stone to be around 120 - 150 lbs. at this point. Realistically, I need to get rid of around 30 - 40 lbs. more before I can hope to move it. The next week may tell the tale . . .

Finally, some cooperative weather . . .

Yesterday was a beautiful day after two weeks of November-like junk weather. I was able to make significant progress on the marble and I think my goal of getting the stone light enough to move is within my grasp – perhaps this week. I've discovered that the hose I bought (50' was the shortest I could find) is long enough to run from the compressor in the garage into my winter stone carving studio in the lower level of the house. It means drilling through both the wall of the garage and the wall of the house, but HEY! Why stop NOW? As for the work so far, the diamond grinding wheel has exceeded my expectation both in speed and effectiveness. Getting this far on a piece of marble in about 7 total hours of work is unprecedented for me. Back at it today.

Best laid plans . . .

Okay, eleven days and counting. October has produced an uncharacteristic and oppressive period of drizzle/rain and cool temperatures. However, it looks as though there'll be a bit of a break in this pattern over the next several days and I might be able to get in some carving time on the stone. I've just about got my pneumatic tool setup ready to use, so I have not given up on getting this hefty piece cut down to a weight I can lift off the bench.

2nd day's progress

This will most likely be the last post till the weekend when I can get back to work on this stone. Today brought a lot of progress and a bit of a setback as well. I got a bit grinder-happy and cut off some stone I think I was going to use. I'll have to redo my sketch to accommodate the missing area, and I think the result will be fine. In ten or twenty years, I'll have forgotten what it was supposed to look like! Anyway, the new tools are very useful. I think it might have taken me a few weeks to remove this much marble with the hammer and chisels.

Finally, a start

After a frustrating three consecutive days of rain to start October, today was sunny and warm. The photo shows the progress made today with two angle grinders, one with a 7" diamond wheel and the other with a 4-1/2" diamond cup wheel. This is my first serious foray into the territory of power tools, and I have to say that, despite the prodigious quantity of dust, I'm very happy with the amount of stone I was able to remove from the marble block in about 2-1/2 hours. The cup wheel in particular kicks up a veritable storm of dust and small chips, and I was surprised by a ghostly visage in the mirror when I finally came inside. I'm going to give it another go tomorrow in hopes of getting the stone under 100 lbs. this month. This stone is likely to end up as the second in a series of "Falling Rock" pieces.