Carving Out Some Fun

One of the activities here at Grundy Lake is soapstone carving and paddle making. Two or three times a year a couple (ironically with the last name Stonehouse) who travels the Ontario parks, makes a stop here so that campers can learn the art of soapstone carving and paddle making. Since I am not interested in making paddles, I always choose to buy a piece of rock and carve away till it resembles some sort of object. You can buy the stone in chunks, some have patterns drawn on them so you can follow it and shape your stone. It all sounds very easy. But it is labour intensive. First, you must cut out your  pattern in a vice with a hacksaw, then you must file down the soapstone for a long time before it resembles anything, shape it into a form, then fine tune it with smaller files until you get the desired result. After that, you have to then polish it to get the file marks out. You do this first with course sandpaper, then medium, then fine. If it is to your liking, you then submerse the rock in water and do a final sanding. This is where the magic begins, as your ordinary rock transforms into its beauty. Your grey stone can turn into a beautiful shade of jade green, black onyx, crystal quartz, it's amazing. After a final water sanding you then dry it off and apply oil, to bring out the beauty in it. If you are lucky enough to get through this all, you have a nice souvenir of your camping trip. Yesterday, I wasn't so lucky as I chose a piece of rock that continued to break off in big chunks when using the hacksaw, then when filing, after I actually got it to a shape, didn't the wing of my dragonfly snap off. It can be glued, however it is definitely not the same after that. After it broke twice, and it got reglued, I then finished it off as best I could. This one will not be making the gift list! Below are some sample of past projects, as you can see, I am no Michelangelo but had some fun just the same.