Making of … Bons open Golf trophy

September 2013 - with the opportunity to participate at the BONS Open in Brunssum , The Netherlands,
I offered to create the first place trophy.

Proud first owner of the Bons Open 1st place trophy:

Now for the process to get to this smile: ...

First ideas / sketches with a golf theme

Selected a stone based on size and form.
I thought this was belgian blue stone as well, but it turned out to be

Green Granite :-) . A bit harder than I had bargained for.

Washing the grime of the stone gives a first impression of the colour the stone will be.

First Incisions to break off large pieces and create the base shape

Using a pneumatic hammer I break away the big chunks created with a diamond cutting blade specific for marble and natural stones

Before - with the cuts.

After using the pneumatic tools. Chipping off big chunks.

The advantage of this hard rock is - that, while it refuses to give away, it also refuses to break apart and split unexpectedly.

In all my other sculptures I was never able to use so much force and abuse a stone in such a fashion without it breaking apart … :-)

More cutting and chipping:

I have now started to smooth out the rough parts using a diamond abrasive disc . A convex metal disk with diamond bits embedded for a very rough "sanding" and smothing action. This is excellent to even create concave shapes in the stone.

(Visible on a later picture day 2)

It is getting dark - end of day 1 :

Rough shape beginning to form, initial figurative element is changing more into a abstract form. - deciding now to go with the abstract , since the rock is too hard to work in more detail with my tools.

Day 2:

Wear and tear. I used up 2 diamond cutting blades at this point, and found out that the sand paper disc - very effective on Belgian blue stone is utterly useless on this granite - the disc burns and doesn't make a dent in the granite … need different approach for this stone.

With the diamond abrasive disk I am getting somewhere...

Even for small corrections I have to cut with the diamond cutter, then hammer with the chisel to get millimeters away.

It's starting to rain…
What did you expect - it's holland :-)

Yes it is still raining , but I also washed away the dust to get a better idea on imperfections and where I need to continue:

On the left hand side you see a rough lump - this will be the base of the sculpture where it will stand on.

Cut away the base :

Shape is getting smoother.

I next tried a disk grinder - 60 grain , but the rock keeps burning

See the brown marks along the center of the sculpture

Now I start the sanding process.
Rough cut marks etc were ground away before , but the electric sander doesn't work - so back to manual sand paper and lots of elbow grease
)@(*#)@$ this rock is hard :-)

100 grain:

600 grain - Standing upright front:

Back

Wet sanding 100 grain:

Finally wet sanding 1200 grain:

First I used Marpol to polish the stone but I didn't like the final result, so now I

heat up the sculpture and use antique wax to finish the Stone.

Wax applied :

Polished: (moved back inside - dark and raining )
End of day 2.

Day 3.
I intended to use a golf ball as "Head" of the sculpture, but this didn't work any more with how the form finally turned out.
So i figured i use the little "foot" as rough and place the golf all at the bottom.
Tried hard and finally found an unused Golf ball with a "1" on it … since this would be the Nr 1 trophy…

Drilling a hole in the rock carefully, using a steel pin and drilling a hole in the Golfball - keeping in mind that the logo and number should be readable from a angle from above…