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From the birth of the game at least four centuries ago, until the modern curling stone came into being, ardent curlers took to the ice with some most unusual rocks.

And although most of us think the modern granite is ‘perfect’, variations on it show that development is still underway.

The professional artist-curlers of today depend for the near-perfection of their play on today’s curling stone – a tough, resilient granite, identical to its brother in color, shape, and weight, highly polished, perfectly balanced for exact delivery, with a finely tapered running cup roughened to a hair’s degree for true curl and exact positioning.

This geometrical masterpiece of tooled geology has been perfected over centuries of play. Your great-great-grandfather ws capable, perhaps, of a game as rare as Richardson’s… but consider the rocks he hurled – 60 or 70 pound Goliaths to be tamed by a David and no less.

There was, for instance, ‘The Jubilee Stone’ which weighed in at 117 pounds! It was but one of many giant rocks taken from the Ericht Channel and other rivers in Scotland. These boulders, shaped by water action, carried a great deal in weight, size, and shape. One writer described them thus: “They were wretched enough… some were three-cornered… others like ducks, others flat as a frying pan. Their handles were equally clumsy and unelegant…”

But these channel-stones, however awkward and cumbersome, were streamlined compared with those that preceeded them. The channel-stone at least had a handle!

The most primitive stones, used in an early game that resembled quoit pitching on ice rather more than curling, were known as loofies. They were flat in shape, about the size of a man’s hand. It is likely that the game played with these stones developed out of distance-throwing contests.

Kuting Stones

The first real ‘curling’ stone was the kuting stone with grip hollows on either side. The kuting stone didn’t actually curl; like the loofy, it was thrown and slid along the ice to its mark. As it could be held only by the thumb and fingers, not with the whole hand, it is as well that these kuting stones were fairly lightweight, ranging from 5 to 25 pounds.

So far is known, the oldest curling stone in the world i sone bearing the date 1511. Is is of the kuting type. Its shape is nearly oblong, with top and bottom rounded and the sides straight, measuring 9″ x 7-1/2″ x 4-5/8″ and weighing 26 pounds. The kuting stone – sometimes called quoiting or even coiting – really got the roarin’ game going and served its players for over a century and a half.

Channel-Stones

Next to emerge were the channel-stones – appropriately shaped riverbed boulders, which were at first used with the addition of finger and thumb holes, then were rough-hewn and equipped with iron handles. from these channel-stones evolved the third major ‘breed’ of rock – a rounded circular stone – forerunner of today’s symmedtrical, high-polished granite.

It was only when handles were added to the stones that any degree of accuracy could be given to delivery. The kuting stone, which faded in popularity sometime in the mid-1600′s, had been impossible to deliver properly. The player gripped the underside of the stone, swung it from behind and gave it a short throw, ending in a thrust forward. No hint of blanaced swing/slide here! The transition from kuting to channel-stone was at first more of a matter of size and weight than of shape. Stones grew larger and heavier as the value of the bigger rocks became apparent. The addition of handles also made it necessary to use a bigger stone to give more depth as purchase for the handle’s iron upright.

These channel-stones, many of which survive in museums and curling clubs, are probably the most facinating of all curling stones. Each one moved in a way peculiar to it alone; each ha a name according to its shape or the owner’s calling. Curling was very much a challenge during this period! One of these odd-shaped rocks – a triangular terror known as “The Cocktail Hat” – unless hit dead on, would not move from its spot on the ice, but would rotate ‘in great perfection.’

The rocks in the illustrations are some of the rocks that were discovered when ponds and lochs were drained or that have been handed down from father to son for generations. Considering the shapes of these stones, there might well have been great conjecture (and small wagers??) as to what would happen when, say, Jock’s triangular rock went ‘a thundering’ down towards Tam’s square one. At what angle would they strike? In what directions would they fly?

In the Scottish county of Lanark, an advanced type of stone with a hollowed bottom appears to have been used as far back as 1784. Another strange type of stone was tried – one sole of which ran on three feet, or points, and the other on a circle of about one inch. Some experimental stones in the region had steel bottoms; others, made of cast-iron had steel or brass bottoms.

Circular Stones

The first really circular stone appeared about 1750, although vari-shaped stones were still in play some 25 years later. An early example of a carefully rounded curling stone, shown in the illustrations, resembled a mason’s mallet of the period.

Variations of the circular type looked more like partly squashed balloons and were often decorated, or marked with the owner’s family crest.

“The Cheese” was one of a rink of stones cut in either the late 1700′s or early 1800′s from a large block of Lanarkshire whinstone (quarryman’s term for any dark-colored rock, often basalt). “The Cheese” weighs 70 pounds and was last used ina match sometime around 1840. After matches it was occasionally used as a test of strength and was also used as a counterweight for oatmeal and cheese!

The popularity of curling waxed and waned but little over the years. When it waned, it was often because the stones were lost. When more pressing work called, the curlers would leave their stones on the ice, where they often stayed until spring thaw provided them with a watery grave. If the men were especially busy, they might not have time to find a suitable channnel-stone or chunk of rock, then shape it and outfit it with a handle before the season came around again.

In spite of minor setbacks, the Scots became more and more proficient at shaping the stones. They experimented with sizes, shapes, weights, and handles to find the best combination for a rock that would stand up to extremely rough treatment and that could be guided to the house as accurately as possible.

Mass Production

More than one hundred years ago, Andrew Kay established the first curling stone manufacturing business. Andrew Kay and Company is still manufacturing today (1965).

As technology improved and workers gained skill through experience, curling rocks became more precisely made. Balance was improved, more satisfactory handles were used, refinements appeared, weights became standardized. Now the ladies bagan to enter the picture, and other countries also sat up and took notice. Scottish emigrants, of whom there were many in the 19th century, carried the knowledge of their beloved game with them to their new countries.

Early Canada

In Canada, early garrison officers improvised stones by filling the metal-rimmed hubs of gun carriages with molten metal and inserting iron handles. So popular were these ‘irons’ that local settlers urged their blacksmiths to make imitations. Thereafter, the irons were preferred above the granites by many Quebec curlers and by curlers in other parts of the country too. Not until the early 1950′s, in fact, was their use completely abandoned for general play – victims of the need for ‘standardized’ equipment in a game of international participation.

Other early Canadian curlers fashioned ‘stones’ from hardwood, weighted with lead.

The Scottish Monopoly

Today, the curling stone that counts is the granite rock. Until recently, virtually all the granite for these stones came from Scotland, more particularly, from a wave-lashed island thrusting out of the Firth of Clyde 10 miles west of the Ayrshire mainland. Ailsa Craig and Wales are the principal sources of the world’s curling granit, which must be tough, dense, abrasion-resistant, resilient, non-absorbant, and uniform in color. The Scottish Curling Stone Company said “The unique quality of Ailsite is that its water absorption is negligible. Were it not so, water-to-ice-to-water expansion and contraction would soon cause small granite particles to break off and pit the rock.”

The granite stones from Ailsa Craig, produced by the Scottish Curling Stone Company, are generally designated as Ailsa Blue or Red Hone. Those manufactured by Andrew Kay and Company in Ayrshire, from Welsh granite, are known as Red or Blue Trevors.

Quarrying the stone requires a great technical skill and exemplary patience. To get one ton of usable stone may take as much as 100 tons felled. Unlike most granites, this granite does not split along a determined grain, but breaks in all directions, sometimes yielding not a single usable curling stone block.

Even when the blocks are ready for transformation to curling stones, there is considerable wastage. A core of about the diameter of a curling stone is cut with diamonds from the block, and if the surface reveals fine hairline cracks, the core must be rejected – such a stone would split or chip in play.

The core is rough-turned, then brought to its approximate finished weight. Next, the stone is brought to exact shape and the polish and striking banks are meticulously finished. The handles – usually aluminum and plastic – are carefully designed to complete the balance. The end product is a true-running stone that is extremely resistant to wear.

Because of the time-consuming, often difficult, and highly specialized methods used in their production, these fine curling stones are expensive. The manufacturers, recognizing that the cost is prohibitive for some clubs and arenas, have made various attempts to produce less expensive stones with the running qualities of the Ailsas and Trevors. The newest of these is the Scottish Curling Stone Company’s “Ailsert”. It has a disc of Ailsite forming the running cup of the stone on one side to give a running surface identical to that of the more expensive rocks. The basic stone however is made of a lower, but still durable, grade of granite.

Plastic Misadventure

Recently, two companies made brief and ultimately disappointing forays into the world of plastic for curling stone manufacture. The first plastic stones were lighter and livlier than the granites – in fact, they continued to move after striking other stones. The early stones also chipped when exposed to the rigors of the game. Although both these problems were solved, curlers were still dubious and the plastic stones were moved from the market. Tradition is so strong in curling, that plastic will probably not usurp even a part of the granite curling stone’s place in the near future.

Canadian Stones

A chance discovery of a fine-grained black granite outcropping at River Valley, 20 miles north of Sturgeon Falls in northeastern Ontario, led to the most recent bid for part of the booming curling stone business. A small company called River Valley Manufacturing Limited was formed when government analysis of the find confirmed the excellence of the granite.

The black granite – darker than the Scottish stone – tested 29 on a device known as the Page Impact Machine, which is used to test industrial building stone. The figure is well above the 21 minimum standard for good tough granite (average Canadian granite registers only 12 to 16) and equal, perhaps superior, to the best granite found elsewhere in the world. Abrasion tests gave a reading of 87.55, higher even than the granite used in Scottish stones.

To help capitalize on the potential of this remarkable granite, River Valley hired a master Itallian stonecutter. Pietro Ellero had never seen a curling stone, but he borrowed one from the local club and painstakingly handcut a pair of them. They were fine, but they wouldn’t curl! Minute comparison of the River Valley stones with regulation stones revealed that the lip of the running cup on the Scottish stone was slightly rough, whereas that of the Canadian stone was highly polished. Now they knew how to make a curling stone that would curl. The next step was to plan mass production methods and refine their techniques to make production economically feasible and place the stones within a competitive price range. Almost all of the machinery and equipment had to be designed and rigged by the company because it simply wasn’t available elsewhere.

The new stones were different in some respects from those to which curlers have long been accustomed, and for this reason, acceptance of them may take a little time. The stones are of regulation weight, but because the granite is denser, they are more compact. To offset the difference in height which results (diameter and running surface remain the same), there is more space between the handle and the stone.

The early River Valley stones chipped and presented other problems in use – not because of the granite, River Valley believes – but because selection and manufacturing techniques were still being developed. Probably the only true test is one of use over an extended period of time and those clubs that have already bought the new Canadian stones will be watched with keen interest in the next few years.

Forecast Bright

The entry of another stone manufacturer is a healthy sign of the game’s increasing popularity, as thousands of new curlers appear in dozens of new clubs every year. Providing the stones are good, there is plenty of demand.

The supplies of good curling stone granite in Scotland and Canada are plentiful enough for years to come, so it’s not likely we’ll ever have to revert to channel-stones. Though wouldn’t it be a colorful Scotch Cup if we did?

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How the Game of Curling is Played

ICE DIMENSIONS

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History of Curling – Internet Curling Club

The game itself is more than 500 years old and its’ true origin is hidden in the mist of time, but it was in Scotland the game evolved during the centuries and also where the mother club of curling, The Royal Caledonian Curling Club was formed in 1838. The game has of course evolved through the years and the latest change on how the game is played was introduced in 1990 when the free guard zone rule was introduced.

This “first curler” must have been intrigued by the way the rock moved and by the grumbling sound it made as it twisted and turned. Other people in the not so distant past have heard this same sound and have applied it as a nickname for the game of curling … it is often referred to as “the roaring game”.

Scots and continental Europeans have engaged in many a lively dispute as to the true origin of curling. Both claim to be founders. Did Scots invent the game, or was it imported by Flemish sportsmen who emigrated to Scotland during the reign of James VI (James I of England)? Did Europeans engage in some early form of curling, and did Scots merely adopt and enhance it? The evidence, based on works of art, contemporary writings, and archaeological finds, has sparked a number of theories, but nothing is conclusive.

Some of the earliest graphic records of a game similar to curling date from 1565. Two oil paintings by the Dutch master Pieter Bruegel, entitled “Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Birdtrap” and “Hunters in the Snow”, show eisschiessen or “ice shooting”, a Bavarian game played with a long stick-like handle, that is still enjoyed today. Another work, an engraving by R. de Baudous (1575 – 1644) after N. van Wieringen, entitled “Hyems” or “Winter”, shows players who appear to be sliding large discs of wood along a frozen water-way. Other sketches from around the same time show a Dutch game called kuting, played with frozen lumps of earth.

The first hand-written record of what could be called an early curling game dates from February, 1540, when John McQuhin of Scotland noted down, in Latin, a challenge to a game on ice between a monk named John Sclater and an associate, Gavin Hamilton.

The first printed reference to curling appears in a 17th century elegy published by Henry Adamson, following the death of a close friend: His name was M. James Gall, a citizen of Perth, and a gentle-man of goodly stature, and pregnant wit, much given to pastime, as golf, archerie, curling and jovial companie. It seems too that the game tempted many people from all walks of life. Records from a Glasgow Assembly of Presbyterians in 1638 accused a certain Bishop Graham of Orkney of a terrible act: He was a curler on the ice on the Sabbath.

By the 18th century, curling had become a common past-time in Scotland. Both the poetry and the prose of the era provide numerous records of bonspiels, curling societies, and curling as a great national game.
The real controversy over the birthplace of the game was initiated by the Reverend John Ramsay of Gladsmuir, Scotland. In his book, An Account of the Game of Curling (Edinburgh 1811), he argued in favor of Continental beginnings. His research into the origins of curling words (examples: bonspiel, brough, colly, curl, kuting, quoiting, rink, and wick), led him to conclude that they were derived from Dutch or German. Claiming that most of the words were foreign, he wrote, but the whole of the terms being Continental compel us to ascribe to a Contintental origin.

The famous historian, the Reverend John Kerr contested Ramsay’s views and campaigned in favor of Scottish beginnings to curling. In A History of Curling (1890), Kerr questioned: if Flemings had brought the game to Scotland in the 1500′s, why did Scottish poets and historians make no special mention of its introduction before 1600?. He also saw no proof that many of the terms were Continental, explaining that many were of Celtic or Teutonic origin (examples: channel stone, crampit, draw, hack, hog, skip, tee, toesee, tramp, and tricker).

To add to the puzzle, archaeological evidence of a curling stone (the famous Stirling Stone) inscribed with the date 1511 turned up, along with another bearing the date 1551, when an old pond was drained at Dunblane, Scotland.
The true origin of curling is cloudy, lost in time. There is no doubt or dispute, however, that the Scots nurtured the game. They improved equipment, established rules, turned curling into a national past-time, and exported it to many other countries throughout the world.

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Curling: What the heck is it? – Internet Curling Club

• The Basics
• The Stones
• The Delivery of the Stone
• Strategy of the Game

The Curling Rink

The Very Basics

Curling is played on ice with (approximately) 42-pound granite stones. The size of the playing surface (a ‘sheet’) is 138 feet long by approximately 14 feet wide. The goal is, after all 16 stones are played (8 by each team), to have a stone of your team’s closest to the center of the house, called the ‘tee’ (see above). This is accomplished by sending your stone to rest in scoring position (a ‘draw’), by knocking your opponent’s stones outof scoring position (a ‘takeout’), and by guarding your own stones with others. The team with the closest stone, inside the house, scores a point, or more if they also have the second closest stone and so on. Each round is called an ‘end’ and consists of two stones delivered by each player on each four-player team. The stones are delivered from the hack on one side of the sheet to the house on the opposite side. This consists of the player pushing off from the hack with the stone and releasing it with a spin, or ‘curl’, which gives Curling its name.

The Curling Stone

The curling stone originated in Scotland from large chunks of rock bowled across the ice, none having any particular size or shape (see curling history). They evolved into what are now matched sets of fairly uniformly made stones. The are all made of pure granite, and they are amazingly hard. The best stones come from a single granite mine on an island off the coast of Scotland. Shipping is quite expensive due to weight (16 stones in a set at 42 pounds a piece, not including packaging), and manufacturing is expensive because of the toughness of the material, which is ground with diamonds.

The stone is concave on both the upper and lower surfaces. On some stones, the degree of concavity is different on both sides to allow for reversing the stone for ‘faster’ or ‘slower’ ice. A handle, usually on a circular plastic disc, is bolted onto the stone through a channel running through the middle of the stone to a bolt on the other end, as shown in the red highlighted region in the cross-sectional diagram. The figure on the right shows the top of the stone, more obviously concave, but without a smooth running surface. The handle is affixed onto this circular surface.

In the figure above, part A is the bottom of a curling stone, which is concave, although you can’t see it well in this picture. The red circle is the actual running surface of the stone. This allows the stone to go farther, more accurately, and pick up more ‘curl’ than would be possible on a flat surface.

There is a lighter-colored band in a ribbon around the curling stone. This is the ‘striking surface’. In manufacturing, the entire stone if very highly polished. This surface is dulled down for the purpose of improving collisions with other stones, both so that there will be a larger contact patch in the collision and so that the stones will not chip.

(click here for a video demonstration of the stone delivery

The stone is delivered sort of similarly to a bowling motion. Actually, it’s not that similar, but it’s the only thing that even resembles it. You start off at what’s called a ‘hack’, or basically a block sticking out of the ice.

Your first motion is to take the stone and pull it backwards, frequently lifting it off the ice in the backswing, then you swing it forward into a smooth glide down the ice.

However, to deliver a stone well, you should glide along with the stone as far as possible.

Good curlers usually glide very close to the ice, in an odd, very stretched pose.

You must release the stone by the ‘hog line’ (see at the top of the page, the diagram of the rink)

As you slow down, the stone glides on, to come into play on the opposite side, beyond the other hog line.

The Game

Curling is always mentioned as a game of strategy by curlers, partly because it is, but also probably because they want to make sure that it’s seen as more than throwing rocks and slipping around on the ice.

Strategy is definitely the big thing in competitive curling, though. A great deal of effort goes into planning an end so your team’s stone ends up closest to the center. There are a bunch of different strategic moves, and here we show the standards:

The Delivery

The Draw
A ‘Draw’ is obviously the most basic move. You send the stone down the sheet, and with the help of the sweepers and the direction of the skip, you somehow get the stone to stop where you want it. Here is shown a perfect draw into the Tee, the center of the House. This would be fairly pointless as a first shot, as it could easily be taken out.

The Takeout
Here, the green stone is taken out by the yellow. The yellow continues on, maintaining most of its momentum (usually takeouts are thrown harder than draws), while also knocking the green stone out of play. The yellow stone could, of course, remain in play if it remained in bounds, but in a basic takeout, the only concern is removing the other team’s stone.

Guarding
Guarding is, as its name implies, placing a stone in front of another (with a draw) to prevent a takeout. In this diagram, we see two green stones and three yellow stones that have already been played. To protect stone A, the yellow team has sent a draw, stone B, immediately in front of A. This prevents a takeout by stone C as would have happened here.

The Team

The team consists of four players, called the ‘Skip’ the ‘First’, the ‘Second’, and the ‘Third’. Terribly imaginative. The Skip is essentially the team captain — generally the most experienced, well-tempered person on the team. Play rotates so that all four team members get to deliver two stones each. At any time, there is one skip, two sweepers, and one person delivering a stone. When the Skip is scheduled to deliver his stones, the ‘third’ (so called because he is the third in line to deliver stones) acts temporarily as skip. From this, we can pretty much guess that the later stones are more important to the outcome of the game. I’m not sure that they couldn’t deliver in any order they chose, but that seems to be the way it’s done. Sweeping is directed by the skip, and the type of shot, as well as the placement of the shot, is called by the skip (or acting Skip).

The Ice

A large element of the game not mentioned so far is the ‘curl’ of the stone. As you can see in the above diagrams, the stone is not coming in on a perfectly straight path. This is due to the curl put on the stone by the curler. As the stone is delivered, a slight spin is put on it, acting like a very, very slow curveball. The pebble is what helps the stone pick up the lateral motion. As is seen here, the ice is sprinkled before the game with a ‘pebbler’, which creates a smoothly hilly effect on the ice, much like little pebbles. Without the pebble, the stone would not be able to travel as far. Our best guess, based on what we’ve been told by people who know, is that the small travelling surface of the stone itself combined with the small contact area of the ice (created by the pebble) creates the same effect you get when you brake on an ice patch. A thin film of water on top of ice creates a hydroplane. Using brooms, the sweepers slightly warm the pebble and thereby increase this effect, causing the stone to glide farther and grip less (which also has the effect of lessening the lateral motion due to curl).

Here’s an explanation we got from a pamphlet published by the United States Curling Association:

Each player shoots or delivers two stones each end, or inning, alternately with their counterpart on the opposing team. A twist of the handle on release makes the stone curl, a little like a “hook” in bowling. All four team members shoot two stones an end and sweep for their teammates’ shots. While one player shoots, two sweep as needed. Sweeping posishes the ice so the stone travels farther if delivered too softly, and vigorous sweeping requires fitness. In a typical two hour game, a curler walks almost two miles.

The skip acts as team captain and strategist. Strategy is a major factor in curling, as important as shooting skill. Some people call curling “chess on ice”.

The playing surface is called “a sheet of ice”, and is designed to allow play in both directions.

The object of shooting is to get the stone, or rock, to come to rest at a predetermeined place (a draw or guard) or to move another rock (a takeout or raise).

The score is determined after each end of 16 stones. See the example illustrated at bottom right. A 12 foot circle, the house, is the scoring area. Stones in the house must be closer to the tee (center) than any opposing stone to score.

The maximum score in one end is eight points. Typically, one to three points are scored. Games are 8 or 10 ends, lasting 2 to 2.5 hours.

So, there it is.
That explanation didn’t include the very basics — which are, basically, that you use the hack (see below) to push off, you with the stone. You travel with the stone. You must release it by the ‘hog line’ on your side. To count as a valid shot, it must make it past the hog line on the other side. The form is sort of shown on the previous page, with our really pretentious “Ivy League Champions” logo. The stick guy with the very long neck has just delivered the stone, and it’s on its way to the opposite ‘house’. People who are really good seem to move effortlessly halfway down the sheet after they’ve released the stone. You use the broom to support your left side (assuming you’re right-handed). You slide on your left foot, with your right leg stretched out behind you, dragging, as you lean far forward to release the stone with your right arm. Pictures are coming soon, but it’s a bit of work to scan them, etc.

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