For metal stone sculpture, casting and cold working are the two most commonly used methods. Stone mountain sculpture is created in the way of cold work. Generally speaking, the artist will first use other materials (such as mud) to make a stone sculpture, and then it will be turned into a model made of fiberglass:
The strength of the model made of fiberglass will be better, and there is no need to worry about being easily damaged like a clay model. When cold working is used, workers will divide the entire outer surface of the
stone carving into many small pieces, and number each piece. The raw materials used for the cold processing of
stone mountain carving are pre-made stone carving boards of different thicknesses. Workers need to draw the corresponding shapes on the stone carving boards according to each small area that has been numbered. Since the stone carving board is flat and the surface of the stone carving works is three-dimensional, first, the area of each small piece should not be too large, and each small piece also needs to leave a certain amount of room to facilitate subsequent processing.
After this process is completed, the surface of the three-dimensional stone carving becomes a flat shape of small pieces: the next step is to use the simplest and most primitive tools to manually knock each small piece into pieces , using the ductility of metal to form a three-dimensional surface that matches the surface of the stone carving. This process is the most labor-intensive, and it also produces high-intensity noise. It is in such a noisy working environment that the master workers are making one piece of exquisite artwork after another.
