I had a private class with my expert on the weekends, he owns Rubble Road soapstone and is one of the instructors for Bedrock supply, and has carved soapstone for 18 years. He normally uses Brazillian soapstone which is more expensive, but is more soft and easier to polish. When I showed him my carvings he said that the main issues was that both the wolf and the bear were too thin so I couldn’t add any details. Usually a normal soapstone cut out is 4 inches wide, but then ones I used were only around 1 inch. On his website he also offers a couple tools such as gorilla glue and some sandpaper. For general carving he also said that you should usually carve from the top to the bottom and add ridges to the legs for more depth. He also said that for polishing I should beeswax, when I asked him why I couldn’t add besswax he said I needed to use a more fine sandpaper first and get rid of the small scratches, and then heat up the stone by setting it in hot water so the besswax melts when it touches and sticks, and then to clean up the excess with a cloth.
I’ll probably take the polishing advice and finish off the carving for both of them, as well as sanding with the more fine, I think the scratches are a bit too deep so I can’t really polish it that fine. I’ll start planning for the presentation, I’ll most likely start with a presentation and bring my tools and sculptures and hand them around so the class can feel what soapstone feels like and how easy it is to carve. But I’ll take some ideas from other’s genius hour presentation, some people are doing videos so they don’t have to speak in person. I’ll see how it goes for them I might change my ideas and edit it.