Post #289572 by Bowana on Sun, Mar 4, 2007 10:57 AM

In a mood for Moai!

I finally started carving one of the AAC (aerated autoclaved concrete) blocks, or as our Aussie friends call it, Hebel. These are 24"X10"X8" lightweight concrete blocks that are very soft and easy to carve. At the risk of repeating too much info that is already on TC, I would like to refer anyone interested in this material to Aaron's Akua's thread http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=10451&forum=7&vpost=143993
This is where I learned about how to work with it. Anything Aaron says about it on this thread is pretty good advice. Thanks for that, AA!

Here it is with a few very basic cuts for the profile. I used a regular carpenter's saw for this.

Here's after a few more cuts, plus some sureform work.

I found it useful to save some of the scraps that were being cut off and use them to prop the carving up while working on it, so don't throw them all away!

These are some of the tools I used. As you can see, there's nothing too fancy. Carpenter's saw, a square, scratch awl, rasp, some Sureforn type "cheese-graters". and my famous riffler.

I found that when working with AAC, it worked best for me to draw the profile on the block and saw away what was not needed, taking extra care to make sure I was cutting squarely. I drew a lot of lines on all sides of the block to use as reference.

Be warned though that this stuff is messy and the dust gets absolutely everywhere! A respirator or dust mask is in order!