Clench

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From: <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <stone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 10:51 AM
Subject: Clench

Quoted text begins.I would like to know your supplier so that I can get hold of some, if only
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to try it just once!!

Hi John,
Here's a copy of a posting I sent earlier in the year:
Hi Everybody, well when I say everybody I mean those of you in and
around the Northamptonshire area in the UK.

I have just come across a great source of carving stone!!!!!
They are:

Weldon Stone Enterprises
106 Kettering Road
Weldon
Nr Corby
Northants
NN17 1UE
01536 261545

Speak to Andrew, A very nice man, very patient and very helpful!
Said he didn't mind if I told all and sundry.

They are Stone Masons involved in restoration work etc.

Their off cut and spoils piles are a wonderful source of all kinds
of stone.

Picked up four very nice pieces!!!
Portland 12" x 9" x 7" @ 60lb
Ancaster Hard White 12" x 12" 6" @ 66lb
Ketton 16" x 8" x 6" @ 50lb
Bath Stone 11" x 10" x 9" @77lb
All four pieces for £10
Should keep me busy for a while!!
Hope this info is of some use.
Oh, by the way, don't go in your best shoes. Just a tad muddy,
and a pair of gloves might not be a bad idea!
They also have lots of other stones, inc CLUNCH, some soft & some very hard.

Here is a short(ish) description of some of my experiences with a few
different stones I have so far carved:
Now!, to get to the nitty gritty.
The Portland stone is fine grained very easy to carve will take a polish,
just off white with no or very few foreign bodies in it, considered here to
be a very desirable limestone to carve. Will take fine detail.

In answer to a query I had about Portland / Bath, Dr Tim Palmer wrote:-

Quoted text begins.but I'm sure you are right about it not being Portland,
which is very low in iron impurities (because it didn't support the right
sort of bacteria in the decades following its deposition). I have never
seen sulphide concentrations in Portland (neither in blocks, nor in the
quarries).
The vein sounds like a calcite vein (common in some of the Bath stones).
These do indeed have larger ooliths than Portland, and the oolitic
structure is much more evident (reasons for this will be published later on
this year; I'll post a copy to the group).
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The Ancaster Hard White. Isn't hard and it's not white (but hey I didn't
name it). A delight to carve, a few colours in it ranging from a pale cream
to a buff in a kind of undulating layered kind of way. A tad harder than the
Portland with an occasional bit of shell, in the piece that I've just
finished I suppose there are no more than a half dozen 'flecks' in it, will
take a polish, but looks wonderful brought to an eggshell finish. Will also
take fine detail, have successfully carved a spider in her web tucked up in
a corner, the body being just about an inch long.

The Ketton I haven't carved yet, but it's courser, the oolites being very
visible, think I'll be able to get a reasonable finish, but not sure about
very fine detail. No visible nasties. Oh, it's a kind of almost rust colour.
Change that. I have now carved Ketton. It's great, though you need eye
protection 'cos it fights back. The oolites take on a back spin and fly back
at you, so don't sing whilst working or you'll forever be spitting bits out
of your mouth.

The Bath stone, the oolitic make up is coarser still. Not consistent
throughout the piece. Have to put up with pockets of hard calcite veins, had
to slow down as I was getting nearer the finished surface, go in too heavy
and what didn't wanna move with the first blow would come away and leave a
cavity with the second. Even had to contend with a marcasite nodule that
brought sparks from my chisel, and left a cavity an inch and a quarter
across, luckily it was on the bottom that I was trying to level. It's an off
white to grey colour with foreign bodies in it.

If Weldon isn't in your neck of the woods perhaps you might be lucky enough
to find a similar firm locally.
All the best
Tony