Sandstone Niche

It’s not often that I get to work on something as fancy as this thing. Each stone you can see in this photo, I made by hand. Each stone took at least 2 days worth of time to make, some took 3 days. The top piece was carved out of a boulder that was so heavy. A skid loader could barely move it around. It took over a week to make. For me, the challenge of figuring out how to make these pieces was fun.

When choosing a stone to work on to make one of these pieces, the first thing you look for is size. Is it big enough to get the entire piece you need out of it? That can be hard to see sometimes. The next thing you have to look for is “Does the stone have any cracks running through it?”. If the answer is yes, you are better off finding a new stone to work on. There is nothing worse than putting a bunch of time into a stone that breaks wrong. Once you take too much off, that’s it. The stone is ruined, you have to start over.

When cutting a stone with a hammer and chisel, it’s not a 100% thing that it is going to break the way you want it too. When it doesn’t go your way it can be very frusturating. It’s just the nature of the job. However, if you have the patience to sit and work on the same stone for days on end. Well, then you can build something like this.

This project is still under construction. Stone masonry, Lebanon county.