Back to work

I am home from the big shows in Chicago and my creativity energy is all recharged. Now it is time to focus on building rather than buying. I have completed the firebrick inside the fireplace box. All that remains in there is to put a little sealer on a couple of bricks I trimmed back. I left it unsealed for the photo so you can see how the sealer really enhances the color of the clay. Look over to the left and you will see a brick at the front edge and one just behind it that look dull and pink rather than a rich terracotta.

I will also be putting "smoke" onto the bricks. It has a very specific type of pattern to the smoke application as  the fire keeps some areas clean while others get the smoke and soot. I am assigning that artistic task over to my friend Don as he is very particular in how he thinks it should look. I do trust his judgement and besides that he is an artist so he really should get out the paint brushes now and again. I will explain all about how it is done later when we get to that part of the project.

At the moment I am busy with the very tedious project of refining stucco detailing and adding some weather checking cracks into the timbers. When I got home I took a close look at the stucco and got out the artist trowel and made up some stucco paste to further refine the surface. Having several weeks off made a real difference in what I could see that looked wrong but before had become too familiar for any real objective personal opinion. That task is not photo worthy or blog time worthy so I will fill in the blog showing you items I purchased in Chicago to put in the house such as light fixtures. Or items I will put into the house when I display it at shows such as pottery and a few chairs.

Naturally being me I also bought a few tool items in Chicago so I will post about those as well.

Holding my breath

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

Have you ever been really nervous about making a part because if you messed it up there would not have been enough material to redo it? That is the case with the band that is just under the top piece of the mantel. I call it a smoke apron, usually I know the correct architectural name for such elements but this time I don't. It functions to direct the smoke up the chimney. I have not fully assembled the fireplace yet, things are just loose stacked together. I can see I need to mix up a little stone filler for some small voids between the apron piece and the mantel top. To make the filler I take stone dust and mix it with PVA glue into a thick paste. Simple to do and it is a perfect color match when it dries.

In  photos of old cottages you sometimes see that the owner has put a little fabric curtain (skirting) below the mantel in the effort to keep the smoke out of their eyes and out of the room.

Now I only have two small pieces of stone left to make and if I don't get it right the first try I still have enough stone to make them over. A little touch up here and there on the carving too. Then I have to finish the brick work inside the fireplace. There are still the chimney pieces to create but that does not worry me, it is child's play compared to cutting and carving the stone.

Miniature reward time

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

I have been working on the fireplace and needed a bit of instant gratification. You all know how that works, you just have to try fitting the parts together before it is ready to be glued together so you can see how it is going to turn out.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

OK now it is back to being a stack of parts, my incremental reward break is over for the moment. My reward also served to give me a little something to post on the blog today. I hope you enjoyed it too.

Surfacing the soapstone

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

I thought you might like to see a photo of the method I am using to smooth the band saw marks off the surface of a thin piece of soapstone. The tool in the drill press chuck is a 1/8" diameter shank, diamond coated bit. I do use a dust collector when surfacing the stone but I removed that so it was easy to see the stone and the bit. I only remove around a 1/16" of the surface in a pass, sometimes less when I get close to the final dimension. Too aggressive of a cut risks breaking the stone.

You can do this task on a regular drill press, even on a Dremel Drill Press if you have a speed control on your motor. Diamond coated bits are not rated for high speeds. Don't exceed the recommended speed stated for the bit you use. Only do this for soapstone, hard stones need to be water cooled while surfacing and you will ruin a regular drill press or Dremel if you get water in it.

The drill press I am using in the photo is a Cameron, high speed, precision, deep throat. This drill press does not look like much, in fact it looks rather old fashioned and well let me be honest...ugly. But it was one of those very lucky finds of a lifetime that one hears about. There it was sitting all dusty and somewhat rusty, on a low shelf in a local consignment store selling used tools. It was the former property of a Boeing engineer who had it in his home workshop where he probably tinkered with making prototypes of his own inventions and made his own circuit boards. Once in very great while they show up used on Ebay. The Cameron drill presses run fast enough that one can use them as a miniature overarm router and the spindle is so precise in the bearings, with very minimal run-out, that you can use the smallest of drill bits without breakage. These are actually a three speed drills press and a speed controller can be added to take the lowest speed even slower. It certainly deserves a place on the wish list for a dream workshop for making miniatures. You can still buy new Cameron drill presses but they are very expensive and probably not in most miniature workshop budgets. Used is a viable option as the Cameron company has very good customer service should you need repairs or parts.

Cutting soapstone tiles

I am back to working on the fireplace. It has a lot of soapstone elements to it. For the apron of the fireplace I needed a few tiles that will be inset into the flooring. Like any fireplace hot wood cinders can come flying out and one needs a fireproof apron in front of the fireplace.

Making the stone tiles involved a number of steps. First I had to thickness the stone. I had previously cut some stone slabs on the band saw. I then made a smooth surface on the slabs with a drill press into which I mounted a diamond coated burr with a flat bottom. That milled off all the bandsaw marks on both sides and gave me a flat piece of stone to work with. Then I made the side edges square, the first long side was sanded smooth, the second side ripped square on the table saw and then it was rotated and I used the tablesaw on that first sanded side. I did not care that the narrow ends of my slab were irregular although I could have used the crosscut miter to square them off. I am stingy with my stone and keep the leftover pieces as large as possible for future use.

Now comes ripping it into thin strips. Relatively thin, too thin and the stone breaks apart. I will rout out some of the wood flooring to inset these stones and hide some of that extra thickness in the final installation.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

I wanted to rip the thin strips on the outside of the saw blade. If I had tried to rip them between the blade and the fence they would have shattered from the stress. To get all the strips the same thickness I created a quick and easy to make gauge.


My jig is just a piece of scrap plywood and a piece of scrap lumber that is double back taped to the bottom side of my purpose made jig. To use it you index it to the side of the table saw top, push your wood or in this case stone against it, then move the fence over to your material and lock the fence in place. Then remove the jig, rip the strip and repeat the indexing sequence for the next strip. You will see that underneath indexing position in a photo lower on the page.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

It takes next to no time or any special skill to make one of these jigs. I simply set the material I was cutting into the correct position for the strip width, locked the fence down. Then I butted the plywood against the material and reached underneath and stuck the taped wood under the plywood overhang making sure I had the strip right against the edge of the saw's table top. No measuring needed to make this jig other than making sure you have the right width for your strip. You can make this jig for any of the miniature saws. On the Proxxon or Microlux tilting arbor saws be sure to move over the plastic table  top extension so you can index to the metal table top. The miniature saw in my photos is from Byrnes Model Machines. Soapstone turns to talcum powder during cutting, it won't hurt the table saw or the blade.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

Once I had my long strips made I cut them into the right length using my miter box. Use a stop block so all your tiles turn out the same size. I dressed any ragged edges on the stones with a small file before cutting the next tile from the strip. If I had a projection of ragged stone or any saw dust against my stop block then my tiles would not have been the same size. One of my tiles cracked right after I cut it, that was lovely since old stone tiles do get cracked. Perhaps someone dropped a pot on it or a chunk of firewood.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

Natural Stone Sink

Today I made the sink for my cottage. It is made of soapstone. Real sinks are also made from soapstone. I believe the French word for this type of sink is "evier" My design is generic, the size based on the area I want to put the sink combined with the piece of stone I had. It was already this thickness and was long and wide enough to do the job. I left the natural edge on the front. I like the fact that the sink tapers at one end, it says "I am  made for the purpose from salvage materials".  That is what my fisherman families would have done often when they needed a home improvement project over the centuries.

These types of stone sinks are typically shallow in depth. I created a small drainboard area. The sink and drainboard areas were milled out using diamond coated burrs. I mounted the burrs in a drill press. They don't have to run at high speeds when shaping soapstone. Soapstone is soft and turns into talcum powder.

If you have always wanted a stone sink for your dollhouse you will find it simple enough to make from real soapstone, you don't need to fake it. A fence and a stop block or two helps keep the edges of the recessed areas nice and straight. You do need a depth stop on your drill press to control how deep you cut.

The sink will drain out through the rectangular recess at the bottom into a channel that goes through the wall. You will see that detail in a few weeks.

Now I need to make the riser blocks that hold up the sink. No taps for this sink, my rustic old cottage does not have running water.

Rope Twist

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I have finished carving the two rope twist supports for the fireplace. I will not be elected as master stone carver anytime soon but they look age and wear appropriate for the structure I am going to put them into. The areas where there is a little crumbling from inclusions in the stone is something I like, it adds texture and interest as well as making the stone look older. I think I might have made the ropes a little narrower but I am out of material so there will be no rework.  Don says they are too big to be ropes in 1:12 scale, they are hawsers, big lines for mooring a boat.

The color of the soapstone is a nice blend with the floor that is going to be in the room.

Now I have more soapstone support pieces to make for the fireplace as well as a mantel piece.

Update to this posting you can link ahead to see these pieces in place. Just click on the line below.
Finished Fireplace

Practicing Rope Tricks

I found some soapstone to use for the fireplace. I want to carve a rope twist detail on a couple of the upright  pieces of the fireplace. You are looking at my practice rope twist carving scrap with all the flaws I made. It is sitting next to one of the pieces I will carve for the fireplace. I love the soft, grey and cream colors and that is how I will use it. If I put an oil finish on the soapstone it is dark grey, green, black, brown and yellow. What a Chameleon this stone is!

I show my practice pieces because I want everyone to realize you don't start out as a master the first time you try something. I expect my practice pieces to look pretty bad overall. But I know what I have learned and if I have gotten enough of a clue to do it right the next time.

I have never carved soapstone before so I grabbed a scrap piece and started practicing. Oh boy do I have room for improvement. Problem one, it is not that easy to get the segments marked out nice and even and then maintain that spacing. Problem two, dust immediately covers over what I am carving and that sure makes it tricky to see what is happening. Problem three, it is  hard to carve perfect rope curves with tools that don't have concave curves. Problem four, no teacher around so this is a slower learning curve. The online instructions I found were of no use for making miniatures.

You can't learn how to do something just by reading a blog although it will give you some pointers in the right direction. If you want to do something you have never done before get out some scrap material, grab some tools and have at it. You will quickly figure out what does not work, that is the easy part. Finding out what does work and then being able to repeat those motions is real the trick.

I am truly enjoying working with soapstone. It cuts with a hand saw, band saw, scroll saw or table saw. It sands nicely too. You can detail it quickly with swiss needle files. That feels more like erasing material than carving stone. Using carving knives is tricky as you can flake off chips you do not want to remove. The needle files give better control for fine detail. A final sanding can be done with diamond coated needle files or wet sandpaper. I find it easier to carve soapstone than it is to carve wood so be sure to try it sometime. Fireplaces, fountains, stone sinks, miniature sculptures, bathtubs, doorsteps, stairways, counter tops, tables, benches, you can make any of these in real stone with just a few basic tools.

After measuring a few real ropes I realized that the lines are placed at 45 degrees and the width of the individual diagonal twist section  is very close to half the width of a three strand rope.