Japanese Stonecarver

["George Graham" <georgergraham@zzzzzzzzzzz>]

Bill,

These websites show pictures of what I would call stone cutting. A stone
cutter in the old traditional meaning, was a person who shaped stone by
breaking the stone in a controlled fashion. To do this kind of work you have
know how your stone is going to break when pressure is applied. Its a very
fast and efficient way to remove a lot of stone, but you have to have a lot
of experience with the stone and tools to get consistent results.
I know of 2 basic ways to do this kind of work. A 2 man team using a
bull-set, and drilling and splitting.

A bull-set is a pair of (usually)10lb sledge hammers, except that one of
them is tapered to a narrow striking edge that is a big version of a
hand-set. Look at pictures of such tools at Trow and Holden website, or
Granite City tool Co. One man holds the tool against the stone where he
wants to set a crack, and the other man strikes the set with his sledge
hammer. By working along a line about 6" from the edge of a slab or block, a
team can trim off huge flakes from the sides of your work. The idea is to
set a crack in the stone, and then keep working the line, forcing the crack
as deep as possible before it shears back out to the surface of the side,
and your flake falls off. If you stop before the break turns out, and flip
the stone over and work it from the opposite side, you can get a very clean
broken surface that has no hand tool marks.

A variation of the bull set is a splitter. One side of the sledge hammer is
tapered to a sharp edge. One man hold the sharp edge on the stone, and the
other man, or woman, strikes it with a sledge hammer. This is a big version
of a person using a hand tracer to score a line across the middle of a thin
slab of stone to split it in two. The heavier tools allow for the splitting
of slabs up to 10 or 12 inches, if the stone has a very reliable strong
grain.

I think most of the work shown in the pictures you sent in were done by
drilling and splitting with wedges. The small square mark that shows at one
edge of the scallops might be all that remains from a square hole that was
chiseled in just enough to get a wedge in. The person doing this work knew
what angle to attack the stone, and how deep to go in his material to get
such clean results. I bet as much of remaining hole marks were broken off
 from the inside of the hole so no extra tool marks were left of the
scallops. What is left is a small tool mark that is part of the sculpture
and need not be removed. Its what I call being true to the stone, and the
process. Those little marks could have been torched off, but that process
would have left its own mark, but while what remained, would be far less
noticeable, it would would very ambiguous. Ambiguous is not what these
sculptures are all about.They are strong and powerful pieces. The tool marks
left over from the process of creation, are just part of the piece, they
belong there.

Thank you for sharing the websites with us. They are excellent examples of
fine sculpture and master craftsmanship.
Thanks,
George Graham