[Ansteorra] ISO soapstone

[Stefan li Rous]

  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 ****