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Turning Stone

M

Mike Johnson

Joined
Jul 26, 2016
Messages
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Location
Nebraska
While visiting a museum a few years back I remember looking at some stone vessels
that were made out of various hard stones like Granite, Diorite and Porphyritic Crystal stone.
Several of the finer quality pieces had small openings and symmetric wall thickness throughout
the shape of the vessel. I have turned a couple of pieces of soft stone on the lathe and I am
struggling with understanding how they did these pieces thousands of years ago.

egyptian vase.jpg
 
Interesting observation. Probably the same space aliens who built the pyramids, Machu Pichu, and Stonehenge. :p
I marvel at how crafters built furniture with only hand tools or a lot of tools that were hand made to do a particular task, such as shoulder planes or contour planes. The wife and I like to visit antique shops. Some of the furniture defies one to find the joints in the wood.
 
Very interesting subject Mike. The Smithsonian in Washington DC has a great collection of Alabaster Vessel pieces that were made in the AD period. Don't know how Egyptians turned it but the pieces are beautiful.
 
modern Indians use a grinder to do the Zuni fetishes.....I imagine a rotery tool would come in handy.....the Ohio region Indians (woodland) carved pipes in many animal motifs.....beautiful stuff
 
Most of the modern stone turners use carbide tools for working soft Alabaster pieces.
The really hard stone usually requires diamond tipped cutters to work the hard material.
The craftsman back then were certainly masters of working stone!
Whenever a wood turner complains about hard wood an ancient Sumerian rolls over in his grave. :-)
 
john lucas said:
Mike Someone asked Rude Osolnik what you used to turn alabaster. He said, "someone elses lathe".
Click to expand...


II've tried alabaster, using my normal scrapers at low speed. Not hard.
Just need to work slow and put up with tons of soapy dust. But its heavy dust so it doesn't fly around.
Its a messy job. So keep a shop vac handy.

I was just creating stone bases for my tall, top heavy pieces. so this was very basic work.
A vase would be much harder.
 
I had to cut some slate one day and used my table saw with carbide blade. I thought it would create a fine dust so I put my shop vac right next to the blade along with the dust collector under the blade. I thought I was so smart as I watched the dust being sucked into the dust collector hose. When I got done the whole shop was covered with black dust. apparently the dust was so fine it went right through the dust collector filter and it just blew it back out into the shop. I turned a salt block on a dare once. Never again. Took many hours of cleaning everything that had metal anywhere near the lathe to keep the rust at bay. That and it would not take a finish. Anything I tried just got soaked up like a black hole.
 
john lucas said:
I turned a salt block on a dare once. Never again. Took many hours of cleaning everything that had metal anywhere near the lathe to keep the rust at bay. That and it would not take a finish. Anything I tried just got soaked up like a black hole.
Click to expand...

:) I did that too, except that it was my own idea when I saw the natural salt rocks at the feed store! :( Horrible clean-up. :eek: Last summer I ended up hosing my 14” bandsaw down in the driveway because I just couldn’t get the salt out of all the nooks and crannies. Live and learn, heh? :cool:
 
Mike Johnson said:
While visiting a museum a few years back I remember looking at some stone vessels
that were made out of various hard stones like Granite, Diorite and Porphyritic Crystal stone.
Several of the finer quality pieces had small openings and symmetric wall thickness throughout
the shape of the vessel. I have turned a couple of pieces of soft stone on the lathe and I am
struggling with understanding how they did these pieces thousands of years ago.

View attachment 23972
Click to expand...
I suspect they weren't turned, but carved in the round. I've turned alabaster, soapstone, and talc, among others. But granite is a whole 'nother material. I can't imagine how it could be turned with the tools they had back then.
 
I was reading an article about the more difficult pieces that have been dug up over the years
in Egypt, one of the articles noted that they were pretty sure that they used a lathe type machine
to do the work. Several of the pieces showed signs of being remounted between centers inside of
the vessel.

Stoneware such as this has not been found from any later era in Egyptian history - it seems that the skills necessary were lost.
Some delicate vases are made of very brittle stone such as schist (like a flint) and yet are finished, turned and polished, to a flawless paper thin edge - an extraordinary feat of craftsmanship.

schist vase.jpg
 
Mike Johnson said:
I was reading an article about the more difficult pieces that have been dug up over the years
in Egypt, one of the articles noted that they were pretty sure that they used a lathe type machine
to do the work. Several of the pieces showed signs of being remounted between centers inside of
the vessel.

Stoneware such as this has not been found from any later era in Egyptian history - it seems that the skills necessary were lost.
Some delicate vases are made of very brittle stone such as schist (like a flint) and yet are finished, turned and polished, to a flawless paper thin edge - an extraordinary feat of craftsmanship.

View attachment 24009
Click to expand...
I suppose that, since we still really don't know how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, they could have had techniques on turning granite.
 
Civilizations accomplished some pretty amazing works thousands of years ago.
I ran across several articles written about a 1000 miles of irrigation canals built
in Botswana Africa thousands of years ago. I had to do the math on this project
to wrap my head around the size and scope of the project which can be seen from
viewing the area with Google Earth. The canals are silted in now but when they were
in use they could have produced enough food to feed 5 billion people a year. The canals
were 750' wide and approx 40-60 feet deep based on changes in elevation. The earth
excavated from these canals was close to 10 trillion cubic yards. If a person were able to
dig 10 cubic yards a day, 7-days a week, it would take today's population of the world 4-years
to dig the entire earth works. These canals are spaced about a mile apart from each other and
run for 100's of miles. In today's economy it would cost 10-15 trillion dollars just to excavate the
earth for this size of project. Not too far away is the Gold and Silver region of South Africa which
had mining operations in place for 1000's of years. Our history books are missing many chapters.
 
Here are several pieces that are over 2000 years old made from Quartz Crystal.
No-one is able to do this with quartz crystal today. It was the early or Pre-Egyptian
cultures that were able to do the fine quality stone work, the later Egyptian stone work
was lacking in ability and quality. Try turning quartz on a lathe. :-)
They have also found drawings of basic lathe type machines dating back to 300 BC. in Egypt.
I would assume if you were riding around in a chariot you would need to be able to
make spokes for your chariot wheels. :-)

Crystal Quartz vases.jpg
 
The Smithsonian also has an interesting display about the history of metal turning. It has some very crude lathes set up.

I remember reading about a guy that bored a larger shaft hole in a ship's bronze propeller using nothing but a piece of a tree stump and a hand forged cutter. The whole cutting apparatus was turned by a donkey and a boy sat on top the stump brushing oil onto the work and brushing shavings away. we tend to think of things a certain way, ie turning the stone, when in fact, it may have been the cutter that turned around the stationary stone. Or perhaps the stone was abraded against a hard form by using grit and water or oil against a much harder stone form.

Look at a wood lathe a bit like a pencil sharpener, except that the pencil is turning instead of the grinding knives rotating around the pencil, as in a hand crank sharpener, or the blade turning around the pencil, as in the little rectangular pencil sharpeners.
 
There is a video that shows Egyptian stone craftsman hand working alabaster with a brace & bit
style cutting tool that slips into the opening of the vessel and is turned by hand to grind out the
interior of the hollow vessel. As the opening is enlarged a large curved cutting tool is inserted into
the hollow and the void is enlarged step by step with larger arc curved cutting bits. I can understand
the hand working ability of alabaster which is very soft stone, but when you start working with the
granite and harder stones they were employing some advanced methods lost to time.
 
Perry Hilbert said:
I remember reading about a guy that bored a larger shaft hole in a ship's bronze propeller using nothing but a piece of a tree stump and a hand forged cutter.
Click to expand...
Does anyone recall the scene in The African Queen where Humphrey Bogart attaches the prop blade with a simple forge and hammer? Amazing what can be done with very little. My father knew an excavating contractor that had this motto- The difficult we do right way; The impossible just takes a little longer.
 
If we’re posting alabaster stuff…

In addition to Max Krimmel, Guy Michaels has some very nice looking pieces. I especially like the segmented rims that do not follow standard segmenting. http://www.alabasterbyguymichaels.com/

The pics below are some turnings I’ve done with alabaster:
Alabaster Tealights1.jpg
Tea lights from white Italian alabaster with blackwood rim and leaf base.

_DCS8648_Edit_Edit1.jpg
6” bowl from “spotted comb” alabaster from Utah.

_DCS86492.jpg
3” Orange alabaster vessel with cocobolo rim and foot.
 
RichColvin said:
Owen,
Where do you get your alabaster ?
Rich
Click to expand...

Practically all of my stone comes from a quarry in southern Utah, Alpine Gems (https://www.alpinealabaster.com/), though the Italian alabaster came from Colorado Alabaster Supply (http://coloradoalabaster.com/this-is-a-test/italian-alabaster/).

I met the folks at Alpine Gems when I travelled through a few years ago while visiting family. They are very easy to work with and I always choose stones that will ship flat rate. (The USPS flat rate boxes are barely holding on when the rocks arrive, held together by the packing tape alone, but every stone has arrived in one piece.)
 
Thanks for the source info, Owen. I was wondering where you got all that alabaster with beautiful dark veins, too. I bought some from Colorado Alabaster a couple of years ago while visiting in Denver but all theirs was just light pink.
 
Lamar Wright said:
Very interesting subject Mike. The Smithsonian in Washington DC has a great collection of Alabaster Vessel pieces that were made in the AD period. Don't know how Egyptians turned it but the pieces are beautiful.
Click to expand...
One of the oldest depictions of a lathe is an egyptian wall painting, I actually have somewhere in my computer...
 
When I was about 8 years old, I had two uncles who were big into tropical fish and exotic aquarium scenery. we traveled to a quarry somewhere in New Jersey, not far from Allentown in Pennsylvania and they filled the car trunk with a translucent green rock that had silvery grey speckles in it. The rock was very soft and they could shape/carve it with saws and rasps. I took a piece and rubbed it on sandpaper and made a 4 sided pyramid. Then we used a cloth and some powdered household cleanser to polish it. They made some kind of Greek ruins looking aquarium decorations with the rocks they had. I had a small piece saved that I tried to mount on a metal lathe years ago. I guess I tried to cut too aggressively and the piece crumbled. To this day, I do not know what the stuff was
 
We visited the Forum in Rome in the early 80's and I was blown away by the columns of stone, some of which did not look sectioned and probably 20-25 feet high. They look turned but hard to imagine how it could be accomplished.
 
@Perry Hilbert

As Al commented, it sounds like soapstone — I don’t believe I’ve ever seen translucent pieces but do know it exists. I’ve bought some small blocks from Dick Blick art stores to play with but haven’t yet. Which reminds me that Blick also carries smaller blocks of white alabaster.
 
soapstone is probably easier carved or grinder/dremel...not sure I would trust the chuck hold....
 
They usually epoxy the stone to a wood base and then screw the wood base to a face plate.
That usually provides a solid base to turn the stone on the lathe with. Your biggest worry is
a major flaw or void in the stone while you are turning the piece. Just like a wood blank you
need to inspect the piece closely before turning and stop the piece on a regular basis to inspect
it for flaws once you work your way into the piece. Not sure which one will cause more damage,
a 10 pound piece of stone or a 10 pound piece of wood? :-)
Staying out of the line of fire would be the best option.
 
charlie knighton said:
soapstone is probably easier carved or grinder/dremel...not sure I would trust the chuck hold....
Click to expand...

Just for discussion, I don’t hold any of my stone turnings directly in the chuck. They are much too fragile for that and I want to remove a piece midway through and remount it without having problems. I flatten an area of the stone on a disk sander or flat-platten sander and epoxy on a hardwood glue block. After that, it’s treated just like a wood turning with a glue block.
 
Colorado Alabaster Supply will sand a flat (or more) on pieces if you ask. They're supposed to charge a little extra, and sometimes they do. ;)

Soapstone is also known as talc and it turns nicely. Both alabaster and talc are common minerals and have been quarried in many places in the US. Most states have an inventory of abandoned mines, as they present numerous hazards, and somewhere on the web is a national database, though I can't locate it just now. In areas around old mines or quarries, you can often pick up pieces of these minerals along roadsides. Our local Tintina Resources talc mine gives samples to those who ask. They get paid best for white talc, so the more interesting light greens and pieces with black specks and streaks are nearly worthless to them.
 
Anyone that turns Soapstone/Talc needs to be aware of the hazards involved with working
the material. The fiber particles can easily cause medical problems when they settle in the lungs.
 
Gary,
You don't want to scare anyone with words like that, next thing you will be telling us that some
wood types are toxic and need proper dust abatement. :-)
Just about any type of material deposited into your lungs has the potential to cause problems.
 
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