Got sold a bad slab of marble and the crack didn't show until I was three hours in
Bought a block of Carrara from a supplier I've used for years. Looked clean on the pallet. Got it on the bench, started roughing out, and about three hours in a hairline opens up right where I'm working. Not a surface crack. It was inside the damn stone.
Now I've got a piece that's either going to be smaller than I planned or I scrap it entirely. Supplier says not their problem, stone is a natural material, inspect before you work. Which is true. But also infuriating.
Twenty years ago I would have kept hammering and ruined it. Now I stop and stare at it for ten minutes and then go weld something instead. Progress I guess.
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Oh man, that's brutal. I can just feel that sinking moment when you realize what you're looking at. Three hours in too, that's the worst, you're already committed, already seeing it take shape.
I don't work with stone at all (acrylic painter here, so my version of this is a canvas that was stored badly and the gesso starts flaking), but I know that feeling of something you trusted just letting you down. The supplier's not wrong about inspecting first but come on, you can't x-ray a block of marble.
Hope you find a way to save it or at least get something good out of what's left. That's frustrating no matter how long you've been doing this.
The canvas analogy is close. With paper you can at least hold it up to the light before you start. Stone you just have to trust it and hope.
Hope you find a way to rework it. Sometimes the piece that fights you ends up being the one you remember.
Appreciate that. And you're right, the ones that fight you do tend to stick. I've got pieces on my floor from thirty years ago I can still tell you every problem I had with them.
This one I'll rework. Just needed to be mad about it first.
Yeah, you get it. The trust thing is real. With stone you learn to read the surface, the sound when you tap it, certain things. But some cracks are sealed so fine they don't show until the tool hits them and the vibration opens them up.
Canvas flaking's its own kind of waste. At least with stone I can cut it down and still have something. Sounds like when gesso goes you're just starting over.