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Dressing the Slate
We'll go onto the dressing- so we got
these rough areas of slate erm...and so what we need is a nice piece of stone
that we'd call a dressing stone- and this would be a little piece of stone
perhaps about a foot square, and then we got a dressing hammer which was very
interesting- because it was...it had...a blade at one end- chopping blade- the
side was flat and then it got claws at the other end, so and also if you've got
a wooden shaft for the hammer and this little hammer would also stand up on the
two claws, it sits- so it'll sit up on the dressing stone...We'll use the
dressing hammer to get the piece of slate we could nibble the rough edges off
with the...jaws- the little jaw- on the edge- just nipped side ways and then
got the flat edge to flatten the side out and the blade to chop little pieces
off carefully- mustn't use too strongly, and then you'd square your material
up- the sides and the base of the bottom of the slate- the top would be left
rather rugged.
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