What chisels to buy initially for a pneumatic tool

["George Graham" <georgergraham@zzzzzzzzzzz>]

Tom,
There are some rules to follow the help.

The farther apart the saw cuts, the deeper the stone breaks below the saw
cuts. Never try to saw to the finish depth. You have to leave some stone to
work down with  finishing tools. If you are working down a level or flat
surface, layout the finish line , and when you are within 1\4", grind or
carve right down to the finish depth, establishing a finished boarder around
the work.

At this point I like to connect the opposite sides by cutting and grinding a
path across the face of the work, right down to the finish depth. Basically
divide the surface up in four parts, using the finished cuts as guides to
keep from going to deep.

The finish you want to end up with now determines what tools to use. Any
tool can go to deep if you stay to long in one spot. So it up to you to get
really fussy and not let it happen. The more you do it the better you get.
What I describe here is the most basic way to work down a level surface. You
can adapt this style of methodical stone cutting to work on anything that
you can lay out and use a straight edge to check for high areas. Cutting a
cylinder for example.

If you look at older architectural Stone work you will see a finer tooled
finish around the boarder of the work which was used to keep the job level,
but usually the finish is rougher inside the boarder. If you do not have
access to a diamond saw and planer, you have to fall back to the old ways.

I've learned a lot by looking closely at old granite monuments that were
done before diamond sawing took over . The chisel marks are still there, and
tell the story of how it was done.  I'm always inspired to keep digging into
stone carving when I look  at  beautiful stone carving that was done with
simple air and hand tools.

Good luck
George Graham