Splitting & pitching
Reading the grain and striking along it — how a block becomes slabs.
Stone splits easiest along its grain — the direction the beds settled, or the plane the crystals lined up. Reading that grain is the entire craft of the splitter.
The process
read find the bed line, the way water found it score a shallow line along the grain strike wedges, evenly spaced, tapped in turn split the block parts along its own history
Pitching
Pitching is rough-trimming with a wide flat chisel and a 3 lb hammer, knocking the proud edges down to a line. It's loud, fast, and deeply satisfying — the first real transformation of a block into something with a face.