When you think lapidary, you might be put off by all the tools and technology that are required, but don’t lose hope. If you’ve ever carved a fire stick while shooting the breeze over a summer campfire, you have enough skill to work with soapstone. It’s the easiest rock and gem material to get started with, and a $10 set of files will have you fashioning amulets in no time.
In this How-To article, we’ll take it a few notches up from carving with a pocketknife – we’ll get some power tools involved. Primitive man can have his “Venus of Willendorf,” but we can do better.
Figure 1. Venus of Willendorf, a fertility fetish carved in oolitic limestone and dating to 24,000 BC.
Disclaimer
Now don’t get the wrong idea – after reading this article, you won’t be able to match famed sculptor Donal Hord of San Diego, who fashioned a young woman’s head from obsidian and created the epic “Thunder” from nephrite jade.
Figure 2. “La Cubana,” by Donal Hord. Obsidian, 1937. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/images/79cubana.jpg.
Figure 3. “Thunder” by Donal Hord. From dark green nephrite jade, 20” high. 1946. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/images/103thunder.jpg
Hord (1902 – 1966) worked with the hardest woods and experimented among various rocks and minerals, including granite, black diorite, obsidian, nephrite jade, and onyx. As a somewhat sickly and sheltered young man, he studied art in Mexico and developed a uniquely American style that celebrates the strength and nobility of ancient cultures. I grew so enamored with him I found a website where I could track auctions to see if his stuff ever comes up for sale: http://www.artnet.com.
More Donal Hord websites
http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/images/107yangkweifei.jpg
Whatever your particular style, the part where art comes in is where you envision the form inside the rough material. You may not know it when you pick it up, or you may see it in a flash of light. I don’t know. This is the part I’m not so experienced in. I’m still at the crude pipes and fishies stage. That’s why I brought in Marty Schippers, an experienced carver in the Seattle area.
Safety precautions
Talc isn’t asbestos, but they hang out together. Around any metamorphic rocks you run the risk of harmful dust invading your lungs. Always use caution and ensure that you have excellent ventilation. If you are going to operate sanders, grinders, drills, and power saws, you should always use a mask, use eye protection, and maybe shin guards and a helmet, if possible.
Figure 4. Be extremely wary of getting dust in your lungs or eyes.
Mineralogy Lesson
Soapstone is a talc-rich schist, and has been fashioned for centuries into jewelry and tools. On the Mohs hardness scale, talc is a 1, and you can scratch it with your fingernail. The more talc present, the softer the stone. Wikipedia has a great write-up, explaining that soapstone occurs when tectonic plates grind against each other at great depth. The heat and the pressure, when mixed with the strange witches-brew of chemicals that circulate miles below the crust, is never quite enough to completely melt the rock, so it retains all its streaks and swirls.
Just to continue the geology lesson into mineralogy, soapstone can start out as dunite or serpentinite, but with more metamorphism, it cooks into a composition of talc, chlorite, and amphiboles, with trace to minor iron and chromium. Pyrophyllite is similar to soapstone and has similar uses.
Soapstone pipes are occasionally found among Native American artifacts, but catlinite, or pipestone, was apparently the preferred medium for fancy ceremonial purposes. As a side note, check out Pipestone National Monument at http://www.nps.gov/pipe. You have to be a member of a tribe and make reservations far in advance to dig there. So stick with soapstone!
Ten Easy Steps
Listed below are ten easy steps to follow when completing a soapstone carving project.
Step 1: Find a rock, get it home
There are multiple soapstone locales in the US, which you can track down using Mindat at http://www.mindat.org. Outside of Seattle, Washington, on the North Cascades Highway, the rivers and creeks near Marblemount contain some good soapstone material, but most of the mines are no longer active. That’s the general area where we collected from, plus another chunk from a Washington State Mineral Council (WSMC) field trip at Lake Wenatchee. If you want further information, consult the Council at their new home page: http://www.mineralcouncil.org. (In addition, a shameless plug: my book Gem Trails of Washington will help you find soapstone at Marblemount.)
Figure 5. Map of Marblemount soapstone area; click to enlarge (from Gem Trails of Washington.)
It’s possible to use a chainsaw or handsaw to remove large chunks of soapstone from an outcrop.
Step 2: Envision some kind of form
Now that you have a chunk, you need to figure out what to do with it. Marty explains, “I don’t know where it really comes from, but you just start to see something in there. I had a small boulder once that I just knew was going to be a frog, and out it came. I carved some salmon once, and it just seemed like the most natural thing to do with the piece. After a little experience, you see something and you just know you could get a small orca out of it.”
Figure 6. Envisioning the form that you are about to release is the tricky part.
Animals and figurines are more of a challenge, so you might want to start with easier projects. When carving simple shapes and abstract forms, there is more leeway in the approach. You may simply want to work with the stone and experiment. It takes practice to learn the art of the possible, so feel free to try different tools and approaches.
As Marty explains it, “Basically, you’re going from big to little. I'm sure just about anything used to shape wood or metal could be employed. A flat screw driver and a carpenter’s hammer would remove a lot of rock.”
Step 3: Cut off big chunks
This is where the dust starts to fly, so be prepared to make a mess. Your main goal is to reduce the amount of time you have to be more careful with trimming. A Saws-All with a good blade will work really well. I’ve seen rockhounds in the field bring a carpenter’s saw with them to cut out top-quality chunks of soapstone, so any saw will work. Power tools are more fun, certainly.
Figure 7. Use power tools such as a Saws-All to remove big chunks of material.
In this procedure, Marty wanted to create an interesting fountain, so he needed to taper the top and leave plenty of room for his imagination. He sawed one side basically smooth, then roughed in some beginning forms on the side for swirls and knobs.
Step 4: Rough out
Marty uses a pneumatic die grinder with rotary rasps and stones for the rough stuff. You might find that a chisel removes pieces more easily, so if you have one, consider using it. This step is optional; the photograph below is from a bowl project. Marty has a better collection of tools than I do, so I never know if he needs to use something or is just giving it a try.
The goal at this step is to have a good roughed-out form. If the piece will be sitting on a pedestal, you can get a flat bottom going. If there are arms or fingers, they should start to emerge. You should start to see your piece better at this point.
Figure 8. The air chisel can help with material that will chip away. Marty used it more on the bowl project than on his fountain, so your mileage may vary.
Step 5: Drill hole
Now that the form is roughed out and sits on a pedestal, it is ready for the fountain hole. The drill bit for this fountain project was insanely long, and required a good, straight aim, plus patience, and some luck. The fountain hole can be one of the trickiest parts to get right, because you sometimes have to drill the hole from the top AND the bottom, requiring pinpoint accuracy. Marty’s advice is to invest in the longest bit you can buy, as, the “two-hole” approach is maddening and can stop a project in its tracks.
Test the water flow of your fountain hole at this point, as the water won’t stain the raw soapstone.
Figure 9. Drilling holes for a fountain requires the right bit and a lot of patience.
Step 6. Fill cracks
Now that most of the rough stuff is over, it’s time to repair the damage. If you sloughed off a piece when drilling, or otherwise saw a crack emerge, all is not lost. Invest in a few tubes of Superglue and get a good fill on the problem areas. Let the material dry for a minimum of what the label says. Be extra patient here, or you could repeat the step.
Figure 10. Some material cracks more easily, but a strong glue will fix the problem.
Step 7: Add detail
At this point, Marty had zeroed in on the forms and shapes he wanted, including a line of grooves on the face. He roughed in the parallel lines with a mix of power tools, including a grinder, and also used a set of files with various edges and tips.
“Just about anything will work,” Marty says. “You can use a hobby rasp or file, a Dremel, some wood carving chisels, smaller fine files, or a pocket knife. Avoid the temptation to try one of your wife's best pieces of cutlery.”
Treat this step as the final work before fine sanding can start. Make sure you have taken enough material off; you don’t want to rely on sanding to remove a lot of rock at this point.
Figure 11. A grinder is good for smoothing down the rough edges quickly.
Step 8: Sanding
At this point, Marty’s form is definitely taking shape. He’s put in a series of rough, parallel grooves, added various knobs and ridges, and worked with the piece’s natural streaking from green to reddish. But the surface is still coarse, so sandpaper is the next tool.
Figure 12. Wet-sanding with a fine-grit sandpaper ensures that you don't take off too much material with each pass.
“As far as the sanding goes, I start with 80 to 120 grit dry sand. It’s pretty dusty, but that’s why they call me ‘Dusty Fingers.’ When I get to 200 grit, I start wet-sanding, which simply involves keeping the sandpaper wet while working. I keep getting finer, going all the way up to 1000 grit. On a typical project, I wet-sand at 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, and even 1200 grit.”
By the way, the finer grit sandpaper is usually found at auto body supply stores – not at Home Depot or Lowe’s.
This is the final step where you take material off, so make sure everything is smooth and nice before proceeding.
Step 9: Polish + Seal
Soapstone will turn color with age, water, dust, or other influences, as it will oxidize and form a crust. The best you can hope for is to slow down the process. There are several different schools of thought here, but Marty reports on what worked best for him.
Figure 13. Marty uses Minwax Helmsman spar urethane to seal the sanded soapstone.
“I would recommend the urethane for a piece you plan to leave outdoors, and any water feature should have a satin or gloss finish. Indoor art would be better served with plain beeswax or "BRIWAX" brand furniture wax. Any wax could be used, but these are my preferences. The point being that fine art does not encourage a hard coating like the urethane. It needs to be as natural as possible.”
Step 10 Present
Here is the finished piece, without any tubes or pumps showing. From some angles, it resembles a horse head, while from other directions it is more abstract. Marty calls the piece “Grooved Fountain.”
Figure 14. The finished product.
Summary
There you have it – ten steps to making your own soapstone carving with various tools. If you just want to make a fetish or amulet, or some ear rings, the process is a lot simpler, and less power tools are involved. Be aware that carving soapstone can lead to working with additional materials, and you can see what experts do with material like jade. The fun part of this project for me was that we collected the material ourself. Plus you can work at your own pace and learn something new. At some point, you may even start to see salamanders creeping out of their rocky prison, and you’ll know you have achieved the rank of a master carver.
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