I have this rock on the side of my driveway and I want to carve my house number into it. I've carved wood, never rock. Any rock gays here have any advice? I'm thinking I will want to use a hammer drill rather than hammer and chisel, but I'm not a professional. It's pretty big, about 5 feet wide and relatively flat, 4 feet thick. I'm not sure what kind of rock it is.
Not a professional mason, but I'd just print a template and use a dremel to carve it out, no? But I think visibility would be an issue, so you'd have to do something to make it not completely invisible
A dremel outline could work but it would take so long because of the size and the speed they cut. Maybe something a bit stronger than a dremel but I don't think you want to go fast with cutting rock so maybe slow is better. As for visibility, I plan on carving the numbers to be at least a foot high, it's about 20 feet off my driveway.
I haven't tried. I can give it a shot tonight when I get home and see what it's like. I'm surrounded by limestone to give an idea of geography, but this doesn't look like limestone.
How hard is it? what does it chip off like?
Use a sandblaster to carve away what you dont want. Then when you are finished you highlight what you carved with paint inside the numbers/letters.
How much material does a sand blaster remove from a boulder? Can it get that fine? I thought they were for stripping paint and rust and other superficial surface materials.
I wanted to carve the numbers in, as opposed to carving everything except the numbers. Then maybe have a light shine on it to highlight it.
take it to a guy
if you try to dremel it best case it'll take 9000 hours and you'll wreck many bits doing it, worst case you'll heat up the rock and it'll just crack apart
you could get a chisel and try that but knapping is Actually hard and you'll probably frick up a lot before getting something presentable (but learn a valuable skill (but only after 10,000 hours))
do what normies do and just paint the thing
paint would be more visible anyway
do you want to carve the letters into the rock or have them stand proud? (don';t know the specific terms)
Update: it's pretty soft. My 2 pound hammer was taking pieces off. A power chisel with a carbide tip might make easy work of this.
Cut out the outline of the numbers with an angle grinder and chip them out with a hammer and chisel. If you want to scuff up the edges to give it that hand carved look just go around it again with a hammer and chip the sharp edges away
Angle grinder could work. I have access to big ones.
The rock is at least 2 tons, it's not moving.
Checked and ya that's the obvious way but I have a lot of projects to get to before winter and don't want to spend 100 hours on a rock. But it does chip relatively easy so it's not out of the question.
Hammer and chisel!
Hammer and chisel!
just use a chisel and hammer bro