HINT: Those gloves they use in sandwich shops, like Subway, are made of Polyethylene, Superglue and the equivalent will not stick to them. They are cheap and can save you a lot of pain and trouble.
The colour comes out when you apply the oil at the end, all of the stone is grey until the oil is applied. The colour is all natural and already in the stone, the oil just helps bring it out.
Got my 8 year old son some rubble road kits and these videos are excellent for helping him get creative, know what to do and keep an eye on as he works along. He loves the long and detailed format of the video. Thank you to the folks at Rubble road who took the time and care to make such fantastic tutorial videos for aspiring stone carvers of any age!
Hey, nice video! :) I have a question i hope you can help me answer. How fragile is the soapstone? I saw that you can scratch it with your fingernail, but does it dent or snap easily? I'm interested in making a mini sculpture for af music box where the lit will close down on it and make contact. But do you think it will deform over time, or can it withstand a little contact? I'm looking forward to hearing from you. - Karsten
Hello, I am sorry for the delay in responding! You can scratch it easily unless you spray it with a varathane to protect it once you are done carving, it doesn't dent or snap easily unless there is a hidden fracture or seam but that isn't common. We have seen many people make boxes and they work great.
Whew, I cracked of a fairly significant piece of a soapstone piece that I was proud of and wanted to sell. Do you think repairing a sculpture this way would take away any value when pricing the end piece for sale?
So the soap stone break was repaired but the superglue created a shiny part of the tray that broke that is different then the dusty overall stone. How and what can I apply to make the surface similar? A polish of some kind?
you can do the details on both sides, you can either work back and forth or form your first side and then go to the other side but in our videos we just do one side for a faster video, we use the videos when we are teaching in schools and the students we are teaching only have enough time to complete 1 side in a school setting.
The regular oils don’t protect from scratches, any of the oils with the plastics in them help prevent scratches like danish oil, or you can finish your carving off after oiling with a high gloss varathane spray, that protects it really nicely from scratches.
This reminds me of doing an art project when I was a kid in elementary school. We read a story about carving soapstone and the project was to carve a piece of ivory soap. I did ... at least tried to do a polar bear. Still stands out as a great school memory. This was fun to watch. Nice job!
