Stone Carving: the jump to power tools

["dondougan@zzzzzzzz" <dondougan@zzzzzzzz>]

Hi AD,
 
Everybody has given you good advice, but let me emphasize you do NOT want to set up in the basement if you are using powertools - unless you and everyone you share the house with likes dust everywhere.  You cannot seal it off - no matter what you do it seams to arrive by osmosis.

As far as powertools, I'd start with a small right-angle grinder with either lots of cheap abrasive discs or an expensive diamond blade. On animal forms the cut-off blade will be used primarily to rough-out waste at the beginning, probably not used heavily in the latter stages of carving.  Go with a good quality grinder - avoid no-name cheap ones that won't last.  The dust will eventually kill the electric motor in all of them, but the cheap ones' lifetime can be measured in weeks where the better ones will last for a year or more.  
Same quality recommendation goes for the die grinder, a tool which will allow getting into negative areas in animal carvings better than the right-angle grinder.  Again, cheap silicon-carbide mounted stones or expensive tungsten-carbide and/or diamond burs.

Small (1/2 or 3/4-inch) Trow and Holden short-stroke hammer for working detail - but don't expect to remove lots of material quickly just because it is a power tool.  Small 30gal compressor will work fine for the hammer and be portable while renting places, but if that is the size compressor don't figure on using much else in the way of airtools on anything but a few minutes at a time (just not enough air).

If you want to find out more about air vs. electric look at the list archives -- several times there have been rather in-depth threads comparing the advantages/disadvantages of each. 
Good Carving to You,
Don  
Don Dougan
http://www.dondougan.homestead.com/indexdd.html