Tools and Machinery of the Granite Industry, Part II

Trimming

A block could be lifted out of the quarry and imxVmediately placed on a railroad flatcar for delivery to the finishing shed (Figure 20) or it could be temporarily placed in a stone yard at the edge of the quarry. Stones in the yard could be further reduced in size by trimming to fill current orders from the sheds. This was accomplished using a bull set and striking hammer (Figure 21 ). The bull set head had a narrow flat surface on one end that was placed against the stone and a beveled striking surface on the other. The striking hammer was similar to the drilling hammer, only larger at six to sixteen pounds. The bull set, usually held by the quarry foreman, was moved along the stone following a chalked line marking the desired edge of the stone. At each position, the bull set was struck by the quarryman with the striking hammer-knocking off a piece of granite (Figure 22). The trimmed off pieces were sent to the grout pile thereby saving on shipping costs to the finishing sheds.

Lifting and Moving Waste Granite (Grout)

Railroad grout cars and flatcars were filled with large pieces of waste granite by derrick. Derrick-raised grout boxes were used for small pieces. The grout cars were run up onto a grout trestle, railroad tracks that ran on top of remotely-located grout piles, where they dumped their loads (Figure 23). Two types of grout cars were used-the end-dump grout car (Figure 24) that dumped grout over the end of the trestle and the sidedump grout car (Figure 25) that dumped grout along the sides of the trestle. The dumping mechanism was powered by compressed air from the locomotive and was activated by a trainman after pulling on a release lever.

Grout could also be removed by a Blondin, an aerial crane or cableway (Figure 26), that carried a suspended grout box, or skip (Figure 27), from the quarry to a distant grout pile. Blondin was the stage name used by Jean François Gravelet, a French aerialist, who in 1859 gained fame by walking across a cable suspended 190 feet above the gorge of the Niagara River one mile below Niagara Falls (Figure 28). The cableway was supported by a horizontal or near-horizontal main rope (typically 2 ¼ inches in diameter), often several thousand feet long, 2 ¼ inches in diameter), often several thousand feet long, suspended between a head tower and a tail tower. A carriage on wheels was driven in either direction along the main rope by a loop of rope called the traversing rope. A fall rope with fall block and hook was suspended beneath the carriage. A steam, compressed-air, or electric twodrum hoist, located at the head tower, drove the carriage in either direction and raised and lowered the fall block and hook (Figure 29). One cableway manufactured by Lidgerwood Mfg. Co. of New York City used a seventy horsepower hoisting engine that could lift an eight ton load on the fall block at three hundred feet-per-minute and could move the carriage at one thousand feet-perminute. The traversing rope was wound four or five times around the traversing rope drum, so there would be no slippage. The traversing rope and fall rope drums were of equal diameters, so when both were revolving, the carriage could be moved while at the same time holding the hook at a constant height. Both hoist drums had brakes so the carriage could be held in position while the hook was raised and lowered and so that a load on the hook could be supported without applying power to the drum. Since at times the fall rope was slack (when there was no load on the hook), it was necessary to support the fall rope so the unloaded fall block and hook could be lowered and so the fall rope did not sag down and get in the way of quarry operations. The solution was the use of fall rope carriers, the number depending on the length of the main rope (Figure 30). The fall rope carriers were supported by a "button rope" that had regularly-spaced "buttons" clamped onto it that increased in size with increasing distance from the head tower. As the carriage moved away from the head tower, each carrier was in turn picked up by and positioned at its own button, hence spacing themselves out and supporting the fall rope. When the carriage moved toward the head tower, the carriers were collected on a "horn" attached to the carriage.