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The term is based on the word "whet", which means to sharpen a blade, [3] [4] not on the word "wet". The verb nowadays to describe the process of using a sharpening stone for a knife is simply to sharpen, but the older term to whet is still sometimes used, though so rare in this sense that it is no longer mentioned in, for example, the Oxford Living Dictionaries.
The development of iron made possible stone carving tools, such as chisels, drills and saws made from steel, that were capable of being hardened and tempered to a state hard enough to cut stone without deforming, while not being so brittle as to shatter. Carving tools have changed little since then.
The hardest stone frequently carved is granite, at about 8 on the Mohs scale. It is the most durable of sculptural stones and, correspondingly, an extremely difficult stone to work. [2] Basalt columns, being even harder than the granite, are less frequently carved. This stone takes on a beautiful black appearance when polished.
Granite is a hard stone and requires skill to carve by hand. Until the early 18th century, in the Western world, granite could be carved only by hand tools with generally poor results. A key breakthrough was the invention of steam-powered cutting and dressing tools by Alexander MacDonald of Aberdeen , inspired by seeing ancient Egyptian granite ...
Decomposed granite is a kind of granite rock that is weathered to the point that the parent material readily fractures into smaller pieces of weaker rock. Further weathering yields material that easily crumbles into mixtures of gravel -sized particles known as grus that further may break down to produce a mixture of clay and silica sand or silt ...
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The stones forming the core of the pyramids were roughly cut, especially in the Great Pyramid. To fill the gaps, huge quantities of gypsum and rubble were needed. [7] [8] The filling has almost no binding properties, but it was necessary to stabilize the construction. To make the gypsum mortar, it had to be dehydrated by heating which requires ...