To work in stone, one need certain chisels and mallets made for stone carving, some sandbags to hold your piece of stone, and various rasps and files. I usually work in soapstone or alabaster. They are varied in their colors and patterns. I set a 40-70 pound piece of stone somewhere where I will casually see it over a period of a few days...this gets me familiar with that piece of stone, and as I catch glimpses of it, I get ideas on what to do with that particular piece. Once I have an idea where I'm going to go with the stone, I begin work.
It is really a matter of just taking out what is not part of the finished piece. I begin with the point, a metal tool that one hits with the mallet at an angle on the stone, It removes large chips form the piece. I follow this with claws, (forked type metal chisels). This can be followed by a smoothing type chisel, and finally, as with the wood sculptures, one moves from rough rasps and files to smoother and smoother files, then several grades of sandpaper. From 200 grade sandpaper on one smooths the stone while wet, (with wet/dry sanpaper). I go down on sandpaper to at least a grade of 800. The final step on a stone pieces is to rub on Carnuabe wax by hand, and polish the entire piece by hand when the wax has dried.
