Chapter 18Maricopa Stone supplied me with soapstone, so that’s where I went to get my alabaster, as well. They found a source for the calcite kind, and I liked working with it better. Still intrigued by the Michelangelo marbles, I bought a good-sized slab of that material to experiment on. The task turned out to be a bigger deal than I expected; not only was marble heavier and clumsier to move—not to mention get through the door of the studio—but I also needed a different set of tools to work it. If I ever got serious about it, I’d need a pneumatic chisel, but first, I wanted to work the stone the way the old master had done—with muscle and hard labor. Even so, I had to buy some tools: a subbia for the rough work, a three-tooth chisel for shaping curved surfaces, a couple of flat chisels,
