my first finished soapstone pot
Aug. 18th, 2020 03:39 amI have been enjoying watching ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fjorlief make her beautiful rag doll, Nandina, and all of the lovely accessories. But it wasn't till I saw her post about making a tiny basket that I wanted to play, and wondered how it would go to carve a tiny soapstone pot for Nandina.
So tonight, sometime after midnight, instead of going to bed, I opened the box of soapstone scraps from various quarries, looking for one that wasn't too big, but was still big enough. I finally selected a scrap that comes from Solem Quarry, which is a bit south of Trondheim, and was used in the 1800's for quarrying stone to restore Nidaros Cathedral.
That piece was just over 1.5 cm thick, ~2 cm wide and ~3.5 long. it had one already perfectly flat surface, from having been previously cut to obtain the chip that I have analysed for my PhD research. So I cut off one pointy end, and started using a flat file to remove the edges and wind up with something kinda like a cylinder. Then I used a round file to start putting groves on one end, so I could make feet, so that the pot can stand in the coals.
It went surprisingly fast to get the legs separated from one another, and then I used a half-round file to define the curve of the bottom of the pot. Finally I carved the inside curve of the pot, using a variety of round and oval tools that are designed to use with a rotary power tool for carving and engraving. However, given the scale of this project, I did NOT use them in a power tool, but just used them by hand. Then I gave it a quick rub with some coconut oil, and about 2 hours after starting I had this:
Now I just need to post it to Oregon so that Nandina can cook over her campfire...
fjorlief make her beautiful rag doll, Nandina, and all of the lovely accessories. But it wasn't till I saw her post about making a tiny basket that I wanted to play, and wondered how it would go to carve a tiny soapstone pot for Nandina.So tonight, sometime after midnight, instead of going to bed, I opened the box of soapstone scraps from various quarries, looking for one that wasn't too big, but was still big enough. I finally selected a scrap that comes from Solem Quarry, which is a bit south of Trondheim, and was used in the 1800's for quarrying stone to restore Nidaros Cathedral.
That piece was just over 1.5 cm thick, ~2 cm wide and ~3.5 long. it had one already perfectly flat surface, from having been previously cut to obtain the chip that I have analysed for my PhD research. So I cut off one pointy end, and started using a flat file to remove the edges and wind up with something kinda like a cylinder. Then I used a round file to start putting groves on one end, so I could make feet, so that the pot can stand in the coals.
It went surprisingly fast to get the legs separated from one another, and then I used a half-round file to define the curve of the bottom of the pot. Finally I carved the inside curve of the pot, using a variety of round and oval tools that are designed to use with a rotary power tool for carving and engraving. However, given the scale of this project, I did NOT use them in a power tool, but just used them by hand. Then I gave it a quick rub with some coconut oil, and about 2 hours after starting I had this:
Now I just need to post it to Oregon so that Nandina can cook over her campfire...