I have two nice Trow and Holden B-series pneumatic hammers for sculptors. They are sweet little tools, awesome for claw chisels, straight chisels, and bush hammers. The bigger one is the green device in the picture below. Several other companies make similar hammers, but T&H literally invented this type of pneumatic hammer for stone backContinue reading “Aside: Making a Pneumatic Point Chisel”
Author Archives: Peter Coates
A Figure In Stone #6: The 1/2 Scale Model
The plan is to start with a half-scale clay model that will be cast in plaster. The half-scale plaster will then be enlarged (using the 3-D pantograph) into a full-size clay. The full-size clay will then cast in a permanent plaster model that can be transferred point-by-point into stone using the traditional pointing machine. HereContinue reading “A Figure In Stone #6: The 1/2 Scale Model”
A Figure In Stone #5: Standing Up Pt 2
Squaring off the bottom so the block could be stood up was interrupted by a mini-hurricane. We continue from Pt 1 which you can find here. It’s all in the video below so I won’t write too much here. If you don’t know how to go about flattening a stone, that’s covered early on. IContinue reading “A Figure In Stone #5: Standing Up Pt 2”
A Figure In Stone #5: Standing Up Pt 1
Dragging Out The Block And Standing It Up (Part 1) I recorded some of the process of dragging a 1000-pound block out and squaring it off so it would stand up vertically. It’s fun to impose your will on a half-ton of stone, but lifting or even sliding around heavy things is inherently dangerous. That’sContinue reading “A Figure In Stone #5: Standing Up Pt 1”
The Figure In Stone #4: The Point Is…
I’ve been pounding away preparing the block and so far, the work has been almost all with the punch, AKA point-chisel, AKA point, AKA bull-point. Worse Than I Thought I knew a significant part of this block was sketchy. It had been left in the weather for many years (not by me) and you couldContinue reading “The Figure In Stone #4: The Point Is…”
The Real Greeks
Neoclassicism is dead and buried but serious sculpture must forever acknowledge classicism’s ghost, if only by whistling past the graveyard. Classicism has always been a Rorschach test for cultures. Generation after generation adopts the symbols and styles of the Athenians of the Fifth Century BCE, but each generation does so in a way that saysContinue reading “The Real Greeks”
The Last Shall Be The First
The technical process of making stone sculpture in any of the Modernist traditions tends to be very different from the way stone sculpture was made in the period from the Renaissance (Fourteenth to Fifteenth Centuries) to the collapse of the academic traditions after the First World War (1918.) The differences stem from a fundamental change in approach that traces back to early 20th Century politics.
Making A Great Tool Better
Something like thirty percent of Amazon purchases trace back to the suggestions they make when you buy something. It’s spooky how well they know you. One thing that Amazon recently tossed up was this style of carving vice, which was new to me. Most of my carvings are panels. When I’ve carved the kinds ofContinue reading “Making A Great Tool Better”
A Figure in Stone #3
Enlarging the Model In the last episode we made the half-size clay original and cast it in plaster. Now it’s time to enlarge it with the new enlarging machine. There’s a post about the enlarging machine here, so I’ll keep this short and just touch on what’s specific to this particular project. Mounting the ModelContinue reading “A Figure in Stone #3”
An Experiment
I just finished this carved and painted wooden goat head. Despite its conventional appearance, it’s an experimental piece. More on that below. Right now it’s so new it still reeks of lacquer thinner. The piece shows up in an unfinished state in a couple of earlier posts. I’d love to have shown the process end-to-endContinue reading “An Experiment”
Sculpture Tech 