Tuesday 22 October 2013

Fresh from the saw

After a little bit of waiting and patience, the right stone was found for the Cobtree Leaf cut - out. The quarry have managed to get me a beautiful stone slab measuring 2 m x 1.7 m x 250 mm. I wanted one face to be sawn and the reverse face to have a natural rough quarry finish. This texture and finish will add an extra quality to the sculpture as it will be positioned along a path that can be accessed from both sides. The leaf cut out still requires some attention and hand finishing after having being lifted straight from the saw. The leaf stem will be cut in and this will complete the design and change the sense of it just being a very irregular hole in the stone. The leaf CAD drawing worked and was compatible with the stone tooling machine and the layout and positioning still gives the sense that the stone is very strong and robust.
The initial idea that the leaf pattern could be cut from the slab and used within the design had to be changed. A separate stone had to be used to create the leaf and although I feel bad about wasting stone from the cut - out large slab, at least I can have the small leaf stem which would have been susceptible to breaking when removed from the centre of the stone.
I should be taking receipt of everything next week and the real carving can commencing.
     

Thursday 3 October 2013

Sourcing the Stone

An update from the quarry confirm that some of the dimension stone / cut to size pieces have been sourced and are ready as well as the large 2.4 m slab for the entrance sculpture. As more stone is being extracted daily from the quarry for specific projects I'm informed that they are still waiting on two suitable 250mm slabs for the leaf cut outs. I have provided the quarry with CAD files which will assist the stonemasons when it comes to 'milling' out the leaf design. This design was originally going to be 'wire cut' from the stone but because the slab and placement of the leaf pattern is so big, the machine is no longer suitable to accurately do the job! Instead, a more labour intensive method of milling the pattern from the stone has to be done!
This process is the same for the three spheres which form the 'Seed Stack' sculpture. As you can see below they are half complete.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

7 Ton of sculpture for Cobtree!

1000 tons versus 3 Caterpillars!!

This wall of stone had not moved in 250 million years and had been diamond sawn into one large chunk of 11metres high , 2.7 m deep and 13metres long ( 386 cubic metres ) . The power of three caterpillar excavators was need to topple this monolith. Quarry manager Peter Dowling orchestrated the movement of the three machines until gravity takes over . This quarry has been owned and operated by Mc Keon Stone Ltd since 1960 , and is the source of Europe's Best Blue Limestone.

The largest slab that I will use in one of the sculptures will be 2. 4 m in height and may well have been excavated in the same manner.

Natural Stone Selection

The sculptures that I have designed have been created with a consideration to the uniformity of the Kilkenny Limestone and its potential to be split into large thin slabs of consistent thickness,
This is a very uniform limestone with few surface imperfections. These properties make it ideal for carving and limestone of this class can hold very fine detail when used in sculpture, headstones, plaques, or ornamental features. The stone will also develop a deep lustrous polish, ideal for the concepts set out in the sculpture trail artwork.
The Carboniferous Period left much of the island of Ireland covered by limestones. Over 2,000 years of use as a building material has established their durability. Irish Blue Limestone has been used for centuries as the material of choice for the construction of prestige buildings. It can be worked to provide colours that range from deep blue black to subtle blue grey and surface textures ranging from silky smooth to positively aggressive. In the hands of a skilled architect, designer or mason the combination of colours and textures can bring the most mundane structure to life or produce stunning variations with the interplay between light and texture.
The extract above has been taken from the lovely people of McKeon Stone who will be the providers of all 7 tonne of Kilkenny for this project.

The Stone and the Quarryman

 
To tell the story of Irish Blue Limestone you need to go back about 370 million years. Obviously at that time Ireland was not the green countryside which everyone is now familiar with in the guide books, but rather part of the floor of a shallow inlet of the sea. This inlet lay on the southern edge of a large landmass which included the present day North America, Europe and Asia and was about 5 degrees North of the equator.
During this long geological history the Dinantian sediments changed from soft unconsolidated muds into the limestone beds that underlie much of the central part of Ireland.
All over Ireland ancient monuments can be found from early pre-christian tombs to Christian celtic stone crosses.