How to Sculpt Limestone

Limestone, which is essentially uncompressed marble (or marble that is in sediment form), is one of the softest stones that you can sculpt with, reaching just a 2 on the hardness scale. To sculpt properly with limestone you need the right tools and approach.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Select the right piece of limestone, keeping in mind that the stone comes in different colors and different hardnesses. Start by looking at some more common limestone colors like moss green or tuxedo gray and take a sample of each bit of stone to test the hardness before you start pounding away at your sculpture.
2. Cut your piece of limestone down to size once you've obtained the right amount of raw material for your sculpture. Ideally, you want to use chisels and a wooden mallet so you can be precise as you hew the soft limestone to the correct dimensions to start.
3. Use tools like the pointer chisel, which is a very rough chisel that comes to a fairly sharp point, to make large, imprecise cuts in the stone. Move on to a smoothing chisel to refine edges and, as the name of the tool suggests, smooth the limestone. Find other tools for limestone by buying a masonry starter set or by going to a well supplied hardware store.
4. Make the round edges of the shape you're trying to sculpt by using a pneumatic hammer on the stone. You can also make parallel cuts into the stone with a diamond saw to create a ledge to stick a pointer chisel into. Hack away at the thickness of the limestone at various points of the emerging sculpture.
5. Refer to a smaller, 3-dimensional model of the shape or figure you're trying to sculpt as your sculpture starts to take shape. Use a tooth chisel to make the necessary changes to the sculpture after you take measurements from your smaller, scaled model with a pair of proportional calipers.
6. Add detail once the basic shapes of the limestone sculpture are well formed by using tools like the toothed rondel to make small and precise changes. Be careful as you put the finishing touches on the limestone since the soft stone can easily fracture or dent under a careless hand.

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