grinder wheels, elitism?

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear All,

Now you'll have to forgive me because I'm occupying my time joining in these
chats because I have an abscess or should I call it an abyss in one of my
teeth or is it my face, anyway I can't chip for a few days.

Walter (I'm a chiseler, not a grinder) chipped in first, followed with
almost indecent haste by Bill and Robin with comments that alluded to a
hierarchy of stone shaping activity with chisel work firmly at the top of
the pile.

My visit to Pietrasanta in July taught me quite a few things about
hierarchies of activity, the main one being that you can kill a surface just
as easily with a chisel as you can with a grinding wheel, in the end it all
seems to get down to how much life you take out of a sculpture by rendering
the entire surface uniformly.

I'd much prefer to think that there are horses for courses, the real trick
is knowing (sensing) when to leave a chisel mark alone, or what chisel to
use or run a file over it or buff it back a little with a Scotchbrite pad or
grinding tool, or polish it 'til you can see your face in it, or leave
evidence of the fins you've cut or the holes you've drilled for splitting or
even leaving the stone completely untouched. + half a million other choices
that you could make in the course of making a sculpture.

I'm not a golfer but I'm sure there's a lot in selecting the right club.

All these things are part of the vocabulary that we have at our disposal and
I think that the language would be very dull if we didn't use them.

Regards to all

Web: www.cowwarr.com