Take Five

Rock Drill!

The drill has been repaired and I have invested in a new drill bit, so its back to perforating sections of the stone with lots of holes close to each other in order to get a nice clean slice of the block. So far I have removed around 1 ton of stone by splitting and blocking out the corners and middle sections. Some sections broke away with ease, other areas required a little more force!. This might be down to my very old hand forged ‘Plugs and Feathers’, which I made myself years ago. They have been pretty faithful to me and have successfully split tons of blocks for me, however this hard Irish Limestone has really punished them, leaving them twisted, bent and a lot shorter! The next stage now is to place the wooden template on top of the slab and to mark out the profile lines again before grinding and cutting away what remains of the drill marks.

Sculpture that Rocks!

At least thats what the local KM newspaper thought of the sculpture trail artwork at Cobtree when we had the official open day. It was in fact a pleasant turn out with a variety of friends and people involved on the project from assistants to members of Maidstone Borough Council and The Cobtree Estate Committee. A big 'Thank You' to Joanna Joyce and Richard Corben, Chairman of the Cobtree Charity Trust for all the encouragement and compliments on the day as I attempted to guide visitors around the park and talk about the individual artworks. I was really pleased with how the work was looking and after a week of landscaping, completed by Eva and Joe and an application of new stone sealant the work looked really impressive, even if I do say so myself.  Work hasn't stopped there and it's on with the next sculpture!! so...I look forward to seeing everyone again at the final instalment of the final new sculpture for the visitor's centre when work begins on site in the autumn.

Keep checking in as new posts and updates will be appearing on the blog for the Visitor's centre artwork soon.