The first step is to cut the foot of the sculpture flat making it the base, so the stone is upside down. Next, we lop off small sections because I needed to see how the stone was going to split, stones fracture differently. Once the foot was cut the crane was called in and the stones were rolled up right. (see video) I chiseled some lines that later would guide my saw work. I made lots of measurements where I wanted the holes drilled and the splitting pins driven to break off larger sections before we start moving toward the final surface with the 7 inch diamond saws . The holes would take about 20 minutes to drill and we had to drill 20 holes some times, do the math. This part of the process took days and was slow and careful. I could work inside the studio on my second sculpture (bronze) that was just in the clay stage.
