Content provided in partnership with
Tools and Machinery of the Granite Industry, Part III
Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Dec 2006 by Wood, Paul
Stone workers were classed in three levels of increasing skill: stonecutters, ornamental carvers, and figure carvers. A student, on his way to achieving master carver status, usually passed through these three levels. Each level brought increasing respect and pay. Stonecutters did the rough shaping of stone-into flat or curved surfaces that may be chiseled, hammered, rock faced or polished. The stonecutter may have been aided by a variety of machines such as surfacers and polishers. Carvers almost exclusively used hand-held tools-some powered by compressed air. Carvers who did primarily artistic work were more highly respected than those who did primarily repetitive commercial work. The master carver went beyond technical skill to a true creative and artistic level. In final finishing, the most skilled of the master carvers gave the stone movement, grace, realism, power and life-even tenderness and emotion. He did this through a combination of shadow-chiaroscuro, contrast, texture and color.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
The master carver typically owned and used a few hundred hand tools. These included pitching tools, chisels, gouges, files, rasps, wood mallets, steel hammers, drills, pointing machines, calipers, carpenters' squares, level, plumb bobs, rulers, tape measures, straight edges, scale triangles, scribers, pencils, sandpaper, sandpaper blocks, Carborundum stones, carvers' turntable, lamps on an adjustable stands, and safety glasses. The carver also used a small pneumatic carving hammer- a ½-inch bit shank and a ¾-inch or 1-inch piston diameter (see Figure 44)-with: a point or roughing chisel for heavy removal and rough usage; a carving chisel for general carving, sculpting, and lettering; a cleaning-up chisel for finishing that scrapes and closes the grain; and a carver's drill that drills small-sized, round holes for detail carving (Figure 55). Often, the carver had a favorite dozen or so tools which he uses most of the time.
After selecting a granite block, holes were drilled around the statue outline, and the excess was broken off with a hammer and chisel. Rough shaping was commenced with a hammer and chisel. A carver's apprentice may have done the initial roughing out. Plane surfaces were cut on the three-dimension figure using a pneumatic hammer with a point, a ripper, a four-point tooth chisel, or bush chisel. The pointing machine was used to transfer distances and relative locations from a plaster model to the stone as it was being roughed out, insuring that the sculpture closely followed the model. The pointing machine consisted of a main vertical rod with several horizontal rods connected to the main rod by setscrew-tightened clamps (Figure 56). Small-diameter pointed rods were connected to the vertical and horizontal rods also by setscrew-tightened clamps. The pointing machine was first adjusted so that its points were resting on reference points on the plaster model. The sculptor would have previously embedded reference points (metal pins) in the model for use by the pointing machine. Then the machine was moved to the stone where the points established the same reference locations. The machine was usually moved back and forth a number of times as the roughing out progresses, each time adjusting the number and location of the points. For a large sculpture, two or more machines would have been used. A typical pointing machine was 28 inches high by 20 inches wide but could be custom-ordered in larger and smaller sizes.
Find Research Guides for:
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »