Craftsman of the Month
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Craftsman of the Month |
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April Craftsman of the Month Larry Hatcher was already an international award-winning wood carver when a friend introduced him to the medium of stone. Here he describes how he created "The Chief."
"A friend gave me a 3-inch by 3-inch by 2-inch piece of obsidian and asked me to try and carve something out of it. I'm a wood carver, but have done several small stone carvings, so I decided to try it."
"The stone had a layer of black about 1/8 inch thick on three sides. The rest of the stone was gray. I started the carving with a wet 1/4-inch shank, 1-1/2-inch by 3/8-inch diamond wheel. When the rough shape was done, I switched to 1/8-inch shank diamond burrs of several shapes. These were also used wet."
"When the carving was finished, I used rubber abrasives, both points and 1-inch wheels of different grades (dry), coarse to very fine. I then went to a 1-inch hard felt wheel with white diamond buffing compound. Next, I used a 1-inch soft felt wheel with several rouges (dry), and finished with a 3-inch cotton wheel with tin oxide (wet)."
"The Tuledad jasper base was buffed using a 5-inch felt wheel and white diamond compound, then a 3-inch cotton wheel and several rouges (dry), then a 3-inch cotton wheel with tin oxide (wet)."
"The whole project was trial and error from start to finish, and took about 30 hours to complete."
Bob Keller ©Copyright Rock&Gem Magazine All Rights Reserved
