How To Carve Soapstone Sculptures
100 grit wetdry sandpaper.
How to carve soapstone sculptures. File marks show as white lines on your green stone. However I prefer to wet-sand with silicone carbide sandpaper. Put on all safety equipment and an apron.
Soapstone sculptures can be dry-sanded with steel wool. Carving with a rough texture. Tung oil or furniture polishing oil.
Stone Carving Tutorial-- Mark Carroll gives an overview of the most popular stones for carving the hand tools and pneumatic tools used and a brief course on stone carving techniques. Using the rasps start carving up to the pencil sketch lines. Think of what kind of carving you would like to do.
A great strategy to start with is to lightly trace an outline of their sculpture on the soap surface. I like to start with 180 or 220 grit. 3 Find add another soapstone image or real photograph if you cant find a soapstone example that you will use as inspiration for your larger piece.
Soapstone is a soft-and-beautiful mineral that is popular for hand carving. Viewing this page requires a browser capable of displaying frames. Students can begin to roughly carve out the shape of their sculpture with larger tools before going back in to work on details with more delicate tools.
Soapstone found in areas of the Canadian Arctic largely varies in color and density. If you want a finished soapstone work to shine it must be properly treated and polished using the right kind of oil and the proper techniques. This is usually sufficient for soft stones such as soapstone.