Table of Contents:
- Introduction and Resources
- The Basic Principle
- Materials You May Need
- How Large of a Stone?
- The Process
There is a long tradition behind stone lifting. It's older than most other forms of weighlifting for the obvious reason that stones are generally very very old (at least in the scheme of human history). One of the more famous events in the history of strength athletics involves spherical stones which are lifted, carried, and loaded onto various objects. These are generally known as the McGlashen stones, or more recently -- the Atlas Stones.
Chances are fairly good that if you're reading this article -- then you are already familiar with them.
There are many ways of making spherical stones, from actually shaping them out of granite, to molding concrete, and this page deals with the latter method.
I reccomend that before you make your own stone(s) you do your research, and take a look at all of the other pages on the web that deal with this topic. I did, and it was incredibly helpful.
The best web resouces on the subject I have found were...
Web Pages:
Jason Keene's "This Old Atlas Stone" - I found this to be incredibly useful and well made.
Messageboards (try a search for "stones" on these boards):
The Anvil -- A great strongman board and a source of much information on making stones. Be sure to look around here.
The Old School Training Board -- Plenty of unusual training info. Has some info on stonemaking.
The Boiler Room Strongman Training Forum -- Lots of information on making and training with the stones.
Read every word, and learn as much as you can from what other people have done. The more you know, the easier the process will be. Those resources were quite helpful to me, and they will serve you well. It will only actually take a few hours of your time to make a stone which will last a lifetime.
Making a concrete stone generally involves the following steps:
- Get a hollow container with an inside shaped like a sphere.
- Fill the container with concrete.
- When the concrete is dry -- get the stone out of the container.
In this method the container is going to be made out of Plaster of Paris, formed around an inflatable sphere (also known as a ball). The ball is removed from the dried Plaster of Paris, leaving the perfect mold for stonemaking. The finished stone will be removed from the mold by breaking it out. Not graceful -- but fun. (Besides... you get to say that when you made your stone you broke the mold.)
Depending on the specific method you use, and what you have access to, you may or may not need all of these things. This is a list of the things I did use, some things I should have used, and a few things you might need to use.
- 2 (big) Bags Plaster of Paris
- 2 40kg Bags Portland Cement
- 2 30kg Bags Construction Sand(generally you should be able to do some simple math for the concrete based on the predicted weight of the stone I calculated that for a 100kg ball I'd need more than one bag of each -- 70kg for the dry mix per bag. Make sure you have enough -- running out would be bad)
- Rubber Gloves
- A filter mask - you should always wear one of these when working with dry concrete or Plaster of Paris. You do not want to inhale that stuff.
- A Big container of some kind for mixing cement
- A few buckets (for water and plaster)
- Concrete bond strengthener (Not very expensive, and it can't hurt to make the concrete as strong as possible)
- Duct Tape
- Water
- A board to build your mold on
- Plenty of Room
- Newspaper, plastic sheet or a Drop Cloth (if you are working in an area where you can't get plaster and concrete on the floor)
- An inflatable ball and means to control its inflation.
- A measuring tape, or string and a yardstick (to measure the inflation of the ball)
- A Hammer and Chisel
- A drill/grinder with a wire wheel
If you want to calculate the volume of a sphere you could use a snazzy calculator like this one which will calculate volume or circumference for said volume, or do it yourself using the following equation fo volume:
4 * Pi * (radius)^3
-------------------
3
...or...
4/3 * PI * (radius * radius * radius)
... in english that would be saying that volume is equal to one third of four times the side to the cube (HTML is generally not friendly for doing math, but one of those versions should make sense).
Chances are you just want a quick chart that will give you an idea so...
Here's something I've taken directly from Jason Keene's site:
Below are a list of weights for circumferences given the weight cured cement as 140 lbs per cubic foot: Circumference Weight 54" 216 lbs 56" 240 lbs 58" 267 lbs 60" 295 lbs 62" 326 lbs
Okay, so now you know how to come up with the weight of stone you want... but what if you want to pit yourself against the greats? Here are a few peices of information that I've gleaned:
- The Weights for the 5 Stones in World's Strongest Man are 245lbs - 365lbs
- The Weights for the McGlashen stones are apparently 198lbs(90kg) - 352 lbs (160 kg)
... although in '94 the heaviest McGlashen stone was apparently 300 lbs.
- I gather that it was a 300lb stone which was first #5 succesfully loaded in competition by Bill Kazmaier.
- Sometimes weights are added to make the stones heavier although they are the same size.
- The World Record Stone that Jouko Ahola loaded weighed 474lbs
On to..
THE PROCESS
| Day 7: The Moment of TruthI left the mold for about 5 days and then began to crack away the plaster using a hammer and chisel... .... At first I had no problems, but that rough area I had brilliantly created when fixing the cracks was more than a little stubborn . NOTE: The lesson here? ... Fix cracks from the outside, keep the inside smooth, you can chisel away any additional concrete created by cracks, when the stone is done. Also -- use some kind of mold -release, or vegetable oil for good measure. A light coat will work, the rule of thumb is that the inside of the mold should be slick but no oil should "bead" on the surface. I chiselled away as much as I could and then took a drill with a wire brush wheel on it to the stone. It worked like a charm (as you can see from this "before and after"...   <----Before After----->  Note: I happen to think that the "After" pic is actually a really cool picture of an atlas stone being exhumed. | |||
The finished stone was nice and smooth. I had gotten some concrete patcher to fix the inevitable pitting that would occur, however it really wasn't too bad, and the patching compound was gritty, which would make the stone rough. I wanted a smooth stone to offer a bit more of a challenge.
- Total time from start to finish: 1 week (+ a few days before heavy dropping to let the concrete cure)
- Total Expense: Around $90 CDN
- Bottom Line: The Plaster Mold technique is really easy and effective, offering the least expenditure of time and money while still yielding a fairly good stone for training.
As I mentioned earlier in this article, I have been experimenting with alternate methods from the "Bigass Plaster of Paris Mold" technique which is so popular. There are also companies which rent and sell molds, while I haven't tried them myself I have heard that they aren't too bad.
I recently tried making a mold out of earth, and after this experiment I suspect that with the right quality of mud you could make an extremely good and inexpensive mold, with the only drawback being the difficulty in vibrating it (although you can jump on a mound of earth and it settles the concrete out quite nicely). A barrel full of sand could be used in conjunction with a plaster-bandage mold. The advantage to this method is that you could make a cheap FULL mold, supported on all sides, that could be rolled around when the concrete is wet. This is most likely going to be the next method I will use.
Perhaps If I ever find the time I will create a page outlining the results of my earth-mold experiment (a stone now affectionately called "Weird Alvin". It created what I wanted - a spherical stone which was small enough (around 150 lbs I would estimate) and with an irregular surface so that nearly anyone could lift it. Perfect for warming up and introducing others to stone-lifting.
With a bit of know-how a reusable fibreglass mold can be made using materials from a marine supply store. I haven't had the time to mess around with this one yet, but if I ever do -- you'll see it here.
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