Curling Basics:
Curling is played on ice with (approximately) 42-pound (19 kg) granite stones. The size of the playing surface (a 'sheet') is 138 feet (about 42 m) long by approximately 14 feet (4.25 m) 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 below). This is accomplished by sending your stone to rest in scoring position (a 'draw'), by knocking your opponent's stones out of 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
The curling stone originated in Scotland from large chunks of rock bowled across the ice, none having any particular size or shape. They evolved into what are now matched sets of fairly uniformly made stones. The best stones come from a single granite quarry on the island of Ailsa Craig, off the West coast of Scotland. Shipping is quite expensive due to weight (16 stones in a set at 42 pounds (19 kg) a piece, not including packaging), and manufacturing is expensive because of the toughness of the material, which has to be ground into it’s final shape with diamonds.
