Selecting Stone

On Saturday morning I had a meeting at Eskdale Quarry to choose a piece of stone for carving a village way-marker.  The idea is to have a large boulder, natural, rough hewn, just as it comes from the quarry with a compass carved into the top.  The sizes and design had been discussed at a site meeting earlier, so I took my measure to check dimensions.

This is a local quarry that I have not been to before, the stone is usually used for building, and for carving I could see it would be a challenge.  It is heavily bedded, and crumbly in parts with large areas of colouring, banding and marking.  This is very beautiful to look at as a boulder, but problematic when trying to carve fine detail.

Despite the acres of stone, I went from one boulder to the next, and next, rejecting as I went due to size, marking, soundness.  Eventually, late into the morning, I found a piece, marking it as the one, and organised  delivery to my workshop.  It will be interesting to see how it behaves.

This quarry was chosen because it was felt local stone should be used for the project and I think this is a lovely idea in theory - in practice, for the proposed design  it does mean compromises.  Consequently I am see-sawing from feeling a bit frustrated to excited by the challenge of working differently and adapting as I go along.

While looking round for my block, I came across a hole in the quarry face, and this was described by the quarry owner as a jet mine.  I crawled and squeezed into the opening (felt very daring) to have a look, but didn't find any nuggets.  Jet was mined all along the Whitby coastline and many mines sprang up to cope with demand at the height of its popularity.

So I await delivery with mixed feelings - hope the weather stays fine as it is too big to fit in the workshop, I will be sitting on top of it to carve!