Content provided in partnership with
Tools and Machinery of the Granite Industry, Part III
Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Dec 2006 by Wood, Paul
Steam from boilers or exhaust steam from steam engines was piped to a heat exchanger. Fans blew air over the heat exchanger steam pipes and into a system of ducts that distributed hot air throughout the shed. On cloudy days or late winter days, the windows did not provide adequate lighting and electric lights were required. Lighting was provided by a row of large wattage light bulbs with porcelain reflectors. They were spaced at regular intervals down the center of the shed, hung under the roof ridgeline.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Before the installation of suction dust removal equipment, most granite cutting sheds had louvered cupolas along the roof ridgeline that were designed to vent airborne stone dust to the outside (Figure 3). Crane operators could open or close the vents by hanging rope-operated, hinged doors. Considering the amount of airborne dust generated, these vents did little to alleviate the dust problem. After the installation of section equipment, the vent doors were always kept closed to conserve heat. For dust removal by suction, the dust laden air passed through a system of overhead ducts that exhausted into dust collectors/filter s located outside the shed. State law required that the suction equipment to be periodically checked with a vacuum gauge.
Each granite company had a shed whistle operated by compressed air that was typically located on the boiler room roof. It blew four times a day: start of workday, start of lunch, end of lunch, and end of workday. All the shed whistles in a granite town took part in a wave of whistle blasts; each whistle had its own distinctive tone and was slightly out of sync with the others.
Unloading the Quarry Blocks
Although today quarry saw blocks arrive on flatbed trucks, in the past they arrived at the cutting shed on railroad flatcars and were unloaded by a yard boom derrick located near the spur track. The block might be loaded onto a transfer car that was pulled into the shed on a standard gauge railroad spur track. (A transfer car is illustrated in Figure 19). Then, an overhead crane would transfer the block to a saw car that was winched into the gang saw on its own dedicated track. Or, the yard derrick might load the block directly onto a saw car if the saw car track extended outside the shed.
Large, multi-shed cutting plant operations required an efficient, high-capacity, materials handling facility, especially for building granite for which a single contract might involve thousands of pieces of finished granite. Often, this was provided by a large, rectangular runway or stone yard serviced by one or more overhead traveling bridge cranes, under which ran multiple railroad spur tracks (Figure 5). This arrangement allowed many flatcars and transfer cars to be simultaneously unloaded and loaded.
Sawing
The ancient Egyptians used a copper-bladed, stone saw with sand abrasive. An early form of handsaw used in the American granite industry had a 2-foot long, 3/16-inch thick iron blade with square teeth. It had an ordinary saw handle and a knob handle at the opposite end of the blade. Often there was an abrasive shot reservoir on top. One use for this saw was cutting grooves between individual reeds (thin parallel strips resembling reeds) on a large monument. In his book, Stone Working Machinery, M. Powis Bale notes that the Collis family, owners of a large marble quarry and early-eighteenth-century stone-working pioneers in Kilkenny, Ireland, employed gang saws that had twelve soft iron blades. The saws used sand and water abrasive and could saw ten to twelve inches per day, doing the work of about twenty hand sawyers. The blade frame was driven by a water-powered crank and pitman rod.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Arts
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »