Newbee has question about bending slate!

[rwfarnkopf@zzzzzzzzzzz]

Well those stories are very funny - I can understand you guys being frustrated in answering the same questions all the time.

Here's where I heard this explanation of bending the slate - which I know now is BS!  I was at a home show.  Being a person that likes to create all kinds of stuff I was looking for new things - of course.  I saw this one dealer had in his booth a wall fountain with a slate curved surface and it had water running down it.  It was over $1,000.00 .  I asked him what the materials were in this fountian and he explained that it was slate - that his artist he deals with has this new process for bending slate.  Well, I just couldn't understand that one!  What do they do steam it and gradually bend the edges?  I couldn't see how this was done.

Yesterday I wrote to a distributor that carries a similar fountian.  It seems that there are many of these things out there now.

I lied - so what - I told the guy I was redueing my house and I liked his fountian.  I especially liked the one with the curved slate.  But I never heard of curving slate and I told him that I was questioning his statement that it was genuine Indian slate as stated on his web site.  I said if this is slate how was it bent?

He wrote back and said that the process is milled that way.  Cut round - chipped away if you will - of course!

The first dealer was wrong - and BS all the way.  That's why I asked this rather silly question.

Now I have another question - is this a difficut process to round off a large piece of stone - how would I go about this - hammer and chissel - what kind of stone is easy to manage and can have water dripping down it.  I also would need to end up with a thin piece so it's as light as possible.

Can someone give me input on this?

Thanks

rick