[Ansteorra] ISO soapstone
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Tue Jun 14 00:39:44 PDT 2005
Isabelot de Forens asked:
> Does anyone have a source for soapstone in the Stargate/Houston area?
Isabelot, I am going to reply to list as well as to you, as I think
there are others who may be interested in this.
I'm afraid I don't know of any suppliers of soapstone in the Stargate
area. I had one supplier of soapstone in Austin, Dyer's Jewelry, but
they no longer carry it. For a number of years I've used soapstone to
carve molds for pewter casting and I've taught a number of classes on
this around the kingdom and at Gulf Wars in which I used soapstone.
When it stopped being available at Dyer's, I took a chance on ordering
it by mail. Sometimes you can find some small 3 x 4 inch blocks of
soapstone in hobby stores, but while they are nicely cut to size with
nice, smooth edges, they are rather expensive. I have also seen folks
selling soapstone pieces left over from countertop installations. While
this soapstone will work, it has been heat treated and is much harder
than regular soapstone and it is much harder to work with. If that is
all you have, then try it, but I would not recommend this stone for
your first project.
It turned out that the stone that I have gotten by mail has been of
much better quality than what I was getting from Dyer's, and even
though the shipping cost me almost as much as for the stone, the total
was less per pound than I had been paying in town. If I remember right,
the last time I ordered it, I paid about $3/pound including shipping
for a 50 pound shipment. I did ask the merchant to select squarish
blocks of stone for me to minimize the waste when I cut it into slabs.
Next time I will ask for slightly thinner blocks because I'm cutting my
stone with a abrasive blade in a power miter saw and my blocks were to
big to cut in one pass. The saw only raises up so far.
For making molds for casting, you don't care if the stone is colored or
pretty or what color it is. You do want a uniform stone without cracks,
hollows or occlusions (hard spots of other stone).
The following is from the class handout for my pewter casting class:
---
The place where I have bought my recent soapstone is:
Roy Torney
The Livingstone Quarry
Post Office Box 277
Coe Hill, Ontario, Canada K0L 1P0
ph: 613-337-5837
This address and phone number have recently changed. So this
supercedes any previous info. The website is the same as
previously: www.eagle.ca/~quarry
The quality is good and Roy has been cordial and went out of his way
to make sure I had the stone in time for my Gulf Wars class.
-----
There are other venders out there who are probably good as well, but
Roy was the first one I ordered with and I've had no reason to try any
of the others.
You can find some other soapstone merchants listed in this file in the
CRAFTS section of the Florilegium:
soapstone-msg (25K) 7/23/04 Use of Soapstone in period. Modern
sources.
If you are, or anyone else is, interested in soapstone to do some
casting, then these files in the same section might also be of
interest:
casting-msg (152K) 4/25/05 Casting pewter and other metals.
pewter-msg (16K) 2/ 7/01 Pewter in period. References. Sources.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
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