Stone Carving and Letter Cutting
I am looking forward to exhibiting some of my work at a charity exhibition in London next week. I will be driving my work up on Monday so I will be closed.
I have 3 of my sculptures on sale here and the commission normally taken by the gallery will be donated to the Worshipful company of masons to help train new stonemasons.
We used the gantry crane to lift the 3.8T block of Forest of Dean Sandstone and then carefully lowered it down onto blocks of wood to protect my precious carving. Once this was done we were then able to move the stone over by lifting and sliding over using the dolly on the beam. The stone would then be lowered back down and this was repeated other 3 times until it was where it needed to be.
Obviously seeing the carving from this angle made me want to get my hammer and chisel and just do a little bit more carving.
Once we had it lined up we could do no more until the lorry arrived the following morning and then the next stage of it’s journey could continue.
When the stone arrived at my studio it was just a block of stone, now it is something precious and needs to be protected, special blankets were wrapped around underneath the straps.
Once the stone was in place on the ground the holes could be drilled and the stainless steel bars could be fixed into position.
The stone was end heavy, due to my carving we couldn’t balance the stone and so Damon used the pallet truck to assist with the moving until the lifting beam had cleared the overhead cables.
When the stone was outside my studio it looked huge, when it was lowered onto the lorry it looked so small but when it was lowered into place it looked like it had always been there.
We were always careful to make sure that the lifting equipment stayed away from any delicate area of my carvings.
When we arrived on site, the first thing was to get the stone off the lorry.
That white house is where George Hyett grew up.
Obviously getting the stone on and off the lorry required a different lifting set up. Once the stone was off the lorry we swapped back to the bar to lift the monument upright and offer it up to the concrete pad.
Then I needed to line it up East/West and then where the holes needed to be were marked onto the concrete.
Obviously drilling the holes had to be done square to the base.
We then lowered the stone and checked for level before the final installation. The stone was levelled against the tower of the Church and then the final fix was done by raising the stone squeezing the glue into the holes and dropping the stone into place.
Once the stone was levelled and the dowels were cemented in, the lifting equipment could be removed and I could stand back and see just what I had acheived.
Finally a sand wall was built and cement was poured under and around the base of the memorial.
The new war memorial was then boxed up to keep it protected and hidden until the unveiling day. John Tandy who had started the campaign for a new war memorial many years ago arranged for his son who now runs the family business Beard and Tandy to erect a box around the memorial to keep it a surprise until the official unveiling.
My lifting expert Damon Bramley and his team were incredible and everything worked beautifully, their care and knowledge helped to take some of the stress out of this emotional project.
Thank you to my Partner Ed Francis for the amazing photographs, documenting this important project, the next post will feature photos from the unveiling.
I drew the soldier on the surface of the stone by scaling up the image that Harold’s son sent me. (see previous post).
The soldier on the WWII side was drawn out and carved in 3D bas relief. I carved it in a precise manner using the grid to assist me in scaling up the details. This was to emphasise the more mechanised and clinical nature of this war.
The overall size of the stone is 8FT x 4ft by 2ft at it’s base gradually becoming thinner towards the top where it is roughly 1ft. The weight if the stone was estimated to be almost 4T so everything needed to be scaled just right so that it looked right.
The 1st thing I need to do is chisel an outline in order to start chopping the stone away, I had to use my angle grinder here as the stone was harder than the WWI side. The soldiers were both roughly 3ft tall.
Once I start to create depth around the soldier I can start to chisel in the outline of pockets and belt etc. I have to be restrained at this time as it is important to leave enough stone to create the full pockets, detail on the belt and creases in the uniform.
I don’t spend much time on the face and beret until I have chopped enough stone away from the rest of the body. It is harder to get the face right as everything has to be taken back from the tip of the nose, if I mess up the nose then I have to work the whole body back again.
Once I have the correct depth to create the features then I can start to carve the finer details.
The face of my WWII soldier was Harold Edwards and I used a photo of him and the clay maquette to get his likeness right.
The last thing to carve was the poppies and although I thought about putting them elsewhere on the stone, they looked just right where I had originally planned them to be.
Thank you everyone for you support through this amazing project.
A special thanks to Reid Lifting of Chepstow for lending me this amazing 5t Porta Gantry to hold my stone and enable me to lift it when necessary.
Drawing on the stone in the rain can have it’s difficulties but thankfully I set my tarpaulin cover up before the rain started.
I was able to use these dimensions from my original third scale design to draw the lettering onto the stone. I made a few adjustments until I was happy with the layout. Obviously I also had to make sure that there would be plenty of room for the WWII soldier.
The lettering is the same size and spacing as the WWI side and as the WWII surface is flat it was more straightforward to draw out. I still had to contend with the rain and wind so I couldn’t stretch my tarp out so I only uncovered the letters one line at a time and worked between showers.
Thankfully the rain didn’t stick around for much longer and by the time I got to the higher lettering the sun was out.
I have made a clay model of Harold Edwards from a photograph that his son sent me, this helps me to get a better understanding of his face but it is quite tricky to get an exact likeness from just one photo so it is more about capturing a likeness than a portrait.
Harold was blown out of his tank in May 1944 at Monte Cassino, he was the only survivor from his tank and was medically discharged. He walked with sticks for the rest of his life but went on to serve the parish of Mitcheldean and Abenhall as the parish clerk.
The photo of the soldier was also sent by Harold’s son and although it isn’t Harold, it is what he would have worn.
By dividing the image of the tank soldier into a grid of sorts, I was able to scale up the drawing onto the stone.
Since re-opening on the 14th April I have spent almost everyday working on the carving of George Hyett. An Abenhall man, George is the face of my 1st world war soldier.
Carving Forest of Dean sandstone takes alot of patience and skill as well as sharp tungsten carbide tipped chisels.
I favour hand crafted chisels from JP Masonry https://jpmasonrysupplies.com/ and Steven Travis https://www.stoneworkingtools.co.uk/ I use 2 different weight wooden mallets, a lump hammer and a selection of dummy hammers with my smaller fine carving chisels.
Due to the ‘plucky’ characteristic of this stone I can’t take too much away at a time as it has the tendancy to pluck more away than I want but it is also very hard so it is quite difficult to work off large quantities at a time unlike the limestone that I use.
The stone came from Barnhill quarry near Coleford in the heart of the Forest of Dean. https://fodstone.co.uk/
It has beautiful Green, Lilac, Red and Amber ochre colours running through it as well as indentations of the fossilised tree bark from it’s origins. I chose the stone for it’s natural primitive surface which in my mind represents the 1st world war. The side that I will be carving the 2nd world war names, dedication and soldier is sawn but not dressed, this to me is representative of the 2nd world war.
These photos were taken yesterday, it’s darker because I have just rinsed the dust off after my days work.
I estimate that I have around 100 hours of carving left, I will also be carving some more poppies towards the top of the stone.
When this is finished it will be installed in the garden next to the Church in Mitcheldean. Unveiling date to be confirmed but it should be in September.