Carving stylized foliage in limestone

[Gargoyle]

Carving limestone with a small hand held pneumatic hammer and an assortment of chisels. I think it's pretty similar to what you guys do in metal, but perhaps I'm being a bit looser and less precise, just going with the flow and going for the flow. Let me know what you think.

Most of the chisels are forged and tempered steel, but I believe I used a carbide tipped chisel at one point early on in this video.

I recently got a nice timelapse camera, I've been posting videos on Instagram and Facebook.
Hope you'll follow me there.
Instagram: IG_Sculptor
Facebook: Walter S Arnold Sculptor

 

[John B.]

Really nice time lapse video Walter, thank you.
And great music to go with it.

 

[monk]

i used a pneumatic chisel "driver" quite similar to the one you used in your video. all manner of points, bush tips, and a few i made myself. i never trained myself to achieve your level of competency. sadly just did a lot of quick dollar commercial stuff. you're quite correct about the flow of the work. bad flow would show in the stone, just as quickly on a gun receiver. only major difference is size.
your work is inspirational to any artist. the quality shows, regardless of the media used, or the size of the work. thanks for the vid.

 

[sam]

That’s awesome Arnold! I would love to try that some day. Thanks for sharing your video

 

[dogcatcher]

Beautiful work. I do similar but with wood and use a Foredom powered chisel, sort of like the NGraver engraving system.

 

[Gargoyle]

That’s awesome Arnold! I would love to try that some day. Thanks for sharing your video

Pop up for a visit some time. I'll put you to work.

 

[mitch]

Very cool, Walter! Could you tell us more about the time-lapse camera?

I've never worked on anything large enough that I could leave my other tools laying on the article being engraving...

 

[Gargoyle]

Very cool, Walter! Could you tell us more about the time-lapse camera?

Brinno TLC200Pro. Very nice, although the menu is simplistic and awkward, takes a little while to get the hang of the settings. However, once you get that it's really easy to use. It's used a lot on construction sites, where they set it up and leave it for months on end, keeps going with 4- AA batteries. You can set it for anywhere from 4 shots per second to 1 shot per hour, or even longer, and you can do things like get it to run from 10 am to 4 pm each day. I got the package with the dust proof water resistant housing and mounting clamp (works either with tripod screw or clamped to anything), about $250. The vendor has been great on tech support, mostly via instagram direct messages, anywhere I had questions on menu settings he immediately sends me a little video showing how to do it.
https://timelapsecameras.com/collections/frontpage/products/brinno-tlc-200-pro-essentials-package

Basically the width of the view filmed is about equal to the distance from the object, which could be an issue with small engravings, since the camera would be within a foot of your work, and you don't want to bump into it or have your hands block the view. For this video the camera was set up about 16" above the work. You can also go further away and crop with a video app afterwards.

I have a larger job coming up, there is a 6' tall, 6500 lb block of stone sitting in front of my shop, so for that one I can mount the camera about 8' away and just leave it there for a few weeks.

I've never worked on anything large enough that I could leave my other tools laying on the article being engraving...

I do that all the time. Keeps the most likely to use tools right at hand, others are elsewhere scattered around the workbench.

 

[dogcatcher]

It sounds like a camera that some agriculture companies use to record crop growth. One company had a camera on one of our cotton fields, it was neat watching an entire crop season go by in about 45 minutes.

 

[Gargoyle]

OK, finished this side, now I've flipped the stone around to carve a little foliage on the back side.

 

[Roger Bleile]

Walter,

What do stone carvers call the style of leaf ornament in that carving? I have seen that style used mostly in Romanesque architecture.

 

[Gargoyle]

Walter,

What do stone carvers call the style of leaf ornament in that carving? I have seen that style used mostly in Romanesque architecture.

It's a variation on stiff leaf. The actual individual leaves are closest to Byzantine or very early Gothic, but the flow is much more freehand and loose, Byzantine is much more precisely defined.

 

[Gargoyle]

Here's another step of the carving:

 

[thughes]

Thanks Walter, really enjoy your posts.

Todd