Tuesday 6 November 2012

This post could save your life


This bust of a man was modelled by my green-eyed girl when she was between 6 and seven years old (she is now 18). 6 years old! Apparently she had minimal help from the teacher as well. The photo really does not do it justice. When I saw it on their shelf all those years ago, I could not believe my ears when they said who had made it. I know professional portrait sculptors who could not do better.


This lump of red sandstone is what I am supposed to be working on right now (my glamorous assistant should have done it months ago). You might not guess it, but it will eventually be a rather ugly urn with four small feet and a band of roses running around it.

There is a lot of basic masonry to do on it before the free carving starts, and because it is sandstone, only tungsten tipped chisels can be used - unless I want to spend half the day re-sharpening ordinary steel ones. That is not the only draw-back to cutting sandstone.

As the name suggests, the stone is made up of hard, compressed 'sand', and so is extremely high in silica. Breath enough of that dust in (not very much) and you will die of silicosis in rather too long a time to be comfortable. For this reason, I wear a good-quality filter mask, and am clad from head to foot in anything that will prevent me from turning a rather pleasing pink colour at the end of the day, and eating sand for the duration, wearing out what is left of my teeth.

Sandstones (or other high-silica stones) are not the most dangerous of them all, however. Can you guess what the most dangerous stone of all to cut is? If you can't, you are not alone - many professionals do not know this either, but may find out too late.

It is slate. When you cut or split slate, thousands of microscopic, diamond-shaped particles are released and they spin through the air almost invisibly - you can see them sparkling in bright sunshine as they do.

If you breathe in only three or four of these tiny crystalline particles, they embed in the walls of your lungs and are never rejected. They stay there for ever and - in many cases - cause a particularly nasty form of silicosis which will eventually kill you.

In the old days, all the Welsh slate which clads the roofs of Georgian Bath was split - by hand - in little open sheds right by the quarries where it was extracted, whittled into a standard shape then loaded up and distributed across the country.

If a Welsh slate cutter started working at sixteen years old, then he could expect to live until he was about forty-five. Remember that if you ever find yourself repairing your old, slate roof.

Here is another bit of information which, although it may not save your life, could prove very useful in the future:

The name of the billhook-type tool which a slate-splitter uses is a ZAX. This is one of the shortest and highest-scoring words which can legitimately be used in the game 'Scrabble'.

18 comments:

  1. Oh Tom,
    What would I do without you ? ............ I was about to start repairing an old slate roof this morning. I think that I'll just do a bit of decorating instead !!
    Your green - eyed girl has obviously inherited H.I's artistic flair. Does she want a carreer in Art ? What a brilliant piece for such a young age. I hope she got a good mark for it !!
    My neice is sculpting a piece for The London Oratory School at the moment ....... good job it's bronze and not slate !!
    Do you ever worry about what you have 'breathed in' over the years ? ( Joke opportunity but serious question !)

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    1. Yes, I worry sometimes, but being a smoker, I don't worry too much. Whatever happens, it will get blamed on the fags. The Girl shows no interest in Art, and I don't blame her.

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  2. Super head. It looks as if it needs a little TLC, and a simple plinth on which to sit. Tell her it's rubbish, that way you might keep her well away from all evil Art colleges!

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    1. I'm trying to keep her away from evil medical colleges right now... actually, I'm not.

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  3. I learn something new nearly every time i read your blog.

    Love what the green-eyed girl did.

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  4. Glad I never took up sculpting. I think patchwork is safer! Interesting read about the various types of stone. We don't have slate here, but it tickles me to think that our old roof tiles represented the individual thighs over which the damp clay was moulded. Some of them were thin, some of them were chunkier!

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  5. Presumably when you are working on these materials, Tom, you have adequate protection. That bust is amazing - is she going to go into that field - she certainly should do.

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  6. I could write a treatise on the lung infiltrators I worked with weaving and spinning--cotton fibers, wool, the dystuffs we put into them and later released into the air. I smoked, too, damn the statistics. When I quit, almost fifty years later my doctor strongarmed me into baseline tests for damage. My favorite was lung capacity. Ten percent diminished. Take that! I am not sorry about the smokes; the cost is just astounding. Oh, yes, we used air filters and masks. Goodness how they clogged up.

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    1. It probably would have been 20% if you had not gave up.

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  7. I shall look forward to seeing your completed urn.
    What about the scagliola, has that now been delegated to your glamorous assistant?

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    1. No, it has been shelved until I complete the work he was supposed to do.

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  8. Not only have you saved our lives, you've made us impossible to beat at scrabble! xx

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    1. You don't have time for Scrabble, or at least Jason doesn't.

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  9. Oh for fuck's sake - my Blogger has packed up again. That's all the response I can manage for now. Sorry.

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  10. I have been wondering for a while what exactly makes your assistant glamorous.

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