Tutorial on carving stone

Workshop set-up and work

In the ideal world, a workshop should have a lot of space to store, work safety with a lot of room around the sculpture, tool chests, shelves and a stone yard. In the real world, very few people have a lot of space.

When I started carving at home I used to have a stone yard in the garden and I have worked in a small shed for 5 years before moving to the family garage with more space for sculpting and storage space. Finally, I have managed to move out of my private environment to rent a business unit in a farm, allowing me to keep applying a lot of principles associated with good practice and safe methods of work. But remember, I have kept applying most of the H&S rules written here, even when working in my small shed. It was difficult but it made a great difference to me as I have sustained no injury because of my art. Space is equivalent to luxury, safety is no luxury but a necessity. Please have a look at the most important elements to consider when creating your very own workspace:

• Easy access to and from the workshop for your heavy stones to be shifted

• Presence of a lot of natural light

• A good level of natural and forced ventilation

• Storage capacity for stones, sculptures, tools

• A safe place to work

Access

As stones are to be moved by machines (crane or trolley), the accessibility is a key factor to be able to shift all this weight safely. It is better to have no obstacle between the space where you work and your stone yard, if possible all at the same level, steps can make life difficult. The path should be concreted so that the crane can roll easily.

Light

The best light is a natural zenith light, you can add as many windows as you like, but a translucent roof is a fantastic way of getting the sunlight in the space.

Ventilation

I have had a lot of trouble with the ventilation of my workshop because of the dust which goes everywhere and the midst on my prescription glasses when wearing the goggles, I had to find an alternative to the mask-goggles. Even if I open all the doors, windows and the roof, the dust stays in such a way that I can’t work for long before I am in the dark, which is not a safe way of working at all.

If I can’t protect myself completely, I should vacuum it. I bought an industrial vacuum cleaner to try to collect the dust, but the machine was not able to vacuum enough air to collect from further that 100mm away. That wasn’t good at all. Finally, I gave it back to the shop where I bought it from and invested in a 20inch fan. It can either blow the air towards the piece (not best as some dust still circulates in the workshop and it is cold to work with a fan being so close to me) or vacuum the air from the piece to force the dust outside the workshop. I chose the latter solution. The fan sits in the door threshold, sucking up the air, the dust gets collected by the air movement and clean air comes in from the other end of the workshop as per drawing. In the workshop, the air is always clean, provided that I don’t use the angle grinder, but it is fine with the die grinder and the Cuturi hammers.

Storage facility

A good workshop layout makes life so much easier, it means the space should be divided into the following areas:

• A set of tool chests for tools (obviously), drawings…

• Shelves for your clay or plaster models, tools, sculptures

• All your machines (crane, trolley, A frame…)

• The stools with different height or weight capacity

• A yard for your precious raw materials, organised so that you don’t need to move all the blocks to get only one, or forget about what you have because all the blocks can’t be seen at a single glance.

Finally, a place is needed to store your sculptures. I have found useful to build a platform in my garage which is like a first floor but only spreading over the third of the garage’s footprint. As I built, it can take hundreds of kilos of sculptures without my precious art being damaged by my kids. 

Safety

Safety is king. The more ordered and organized you are, the safest you will be. A studio should be cleaned every day, the broom must be you friend as chippings can be a trip hazard when you carry your stone, the dust is bad to breath, you can trip over if the place gets too messy and finally, you can’t find what you are looking for. Also, when a potential customer would like to visit your studio, you will give a good impression if you show that your work in done in an organised environment.

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