When I finish a stone sculpture I use wet/dry sandpaper to polish the stone. This works very nicely with alabaster, chlorite, and wonderstone (pyrophyllite). I don’t do marble, so I can’t tell you much about how to polish marble.

But when it comes to polishing alabaster I’m a bit of an old hand. I’ve polished about 100 different sculptures to date — some small, small large.

After taking the sculpture as far as I intend with rasp, I start in using 120 grit sandpaper. I used to use 3M 150 wet/dry. Boy that was a sweet sandpaper. Can’t get it much anymore — leastwise not the same quality as the old black stuff. Too bad I didn’t stock up more.

The job of the 120 grit sandpaper is to remove all, All, ALL scratches left by the rasping process. If I get anxious and move on to 220 grit (the next sandpaper in the process) before all of the rasp marks are gone, then those rasp marks will be there at the end. This 120 to 220 barrier is an important one.

The sizes of sandpaper I use are 120, 220, 320, 400, 600, 1500. If I move from 220 to 320 a little early it is not such a big deal. The 320 can (with a little extra effort) do the job of the 220. But the 220 just can’t manage the job that 120 is designed for. Admittedly it is important to finish with each stage of sandpaper before moving on to the next. Even so, the 120 to 220 is extremely important.

Back in the ol’ day — long before I learned this lesson the hard way — I would be working with 600 grit and have a very smooth sculpture with a very well defined rasp mark that would just not come out. I tried backing down to 400 to remove it — no go. I tried backing down to 320 to remove it — no go. I tried backing down to 220 — no go. I had to go back to the 120 to remove the mark. Then, of course, I had to re-polish with each of the intermediate grits back up to 600.

You’d think I would have learned my lesson after the first time — lol. Well, at least I learned it after the second time. Since then I am very careful to make sure that all rasp marks are gone before moving from 120 to 220.

Spiritual Gaming — The Talks

E.J. Gold’s publisher, Gateways Books and Tapes, is coming out with a new book this next spring which will contain transcription extracted from over thirty years of talks/lectures. These talks have ranged on every aspect of spiritual gaming from Monopoly to Nintendo, and from Doom to UnReal. This will be an amazing resource for the spiritual gaming community.

The title of the book is “Spiritual Gaming — The Talks.”

Yes, this is just the first book in his trilogy.

Any Game — Recipes for Spiritual Gaming off to the press.

The book has been sent to the printers as of last week. Folks seem to like the cover well enough, and the contents have been getting some rave reviews. The results from the test groups have been very encouraging.

As predicted many months ago when starting this project, we did have a few folks that were a little annoyed by the lack of theory (or preaching as I think of it). This book was designed with one, and only one goal, in mind — give people the tools necessary so that they can have their own spiritual gaming experience and find out for themselves what it’s all about.

To this end, I have kept discussion of what to expect, or what might happen to a bare minimum. Instead there is recipe after recipe which anyone can use to cook up their own spiritual gaming adventure.

Forgive the above, my publisher requested some sound bytes on the book. Since I was here and the words were popping in the head, I thought I’d try out a few.

Blogging a dead horse.

It has been almost forever since my previous blog. I guess that is the problem with being a webmaster on so many websites — you tend to get your writing itch scratched long before you get around to doing the blog.

As the gaming season is upon us (when is it not) I guess it’s time to get back into the saddle. Unfortunately, this horse seems to be all but dead. Well, perhaps a few blog posting will bring it around — hence, the title “Blogging a dead horse.” I bet you didn’t think I could logically connect the pun with anything real.

More news in the next post.

HipBone Games

Thanks to Bruce I was reintroduced to HipBone Games.

I remember running across this website a while back. Then, as with many things, time pasted and the website slipped from my radar.

Well, now that SpiritualGaming.com is in full swing it was obviously time to be reintroduced. Thanks Bruce.

LA Spiritual Gaming Seminar a Great Success.

We had a great time at the LA SG-Seminar. Things could not have gone better. The attendees were a mixture of never gamed before to old time gamers. We worked with Mancala and Monotony. Both very productive.

We look forward to getting back down to LA soon.

Speaking of getting back down to LA soon, we had a fantastic visit with Funologist Bernie DeKoven. You may know of him from DeepFun.com fame.

Definitely kindred spirits. Not to mention the pleasant co-incedence that his wife happens to share our painting enthusiasm. Lee and I both envied her studio — amazing lighting, which she puts to good use on a variety of styles.

One of the results of this meeting has been a rework of many pages on the spiritualgaming.com website. You can check it out for changes.

And so the journey continues……

During a recent visit to friend and spiritual teacher EJ Gold we had the opportunity of discussing some of these ideas with both EJ and Mr. Lee (Lozowick). The feedback was most helpful. Several issues were brought to the forefront that deserve elucidation as the days roll by.