IRON AGAINST GRANITE
By Paul Wood
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
Aug 4 2008
VT
Blacksmiths were essential in conquering the hard stone
This is the latest in a series of monthly articles on the history
of Vermont’s granite industry provided by the Vermont Granite Museum
of Barre.
The Vermont Granite Museum is installing a working blacksmith shop
in its historic Jones Brothers granite shed. The shop will include
a spectrum of blacksmithing tools and machinery, including forges,
tongs to hold granite-working tools, anvils, hammers, quenching tubs,
hardy blocks, trip hammers, grinders, tool racks, and work benches.
The tools and machinery have been donated by Norm Akley and Lauren
LaMorte of the Trow & Holden Co. The shop will be manned by experienced
blacksmiths, who will hold blacksmithing workshops as part of the
Stone Arts School curriculum. Local blacksmiths Jim Fecteau and
Richard Spreda have helped in the planning for both the blacksmith
shop and Stone Arts School workshops.
The use of iron and steel in quarrying, moving and finishing of granite
is almost endless. It is fair to say that without iron and steel,
granite would never have developed into a major industry. By the
early-20th century, granite manufacturers and tool-making companies
in Barre were employing hundreds of blacksmiths and machinists. As
the cost of iron decreased and stronger steels became available, more
of the wooden components of machinery used in the granite industry
were replaced by iron and steel until most machines were devoid of
wooden parts.
Granite manufacture involves the use of iron or steel tools directly
impacting, crushing or abrading the granite. Quarrying depends on
deep hole quarry drills and bits, jackhammers, plug drills, wedges
and shims, boom derricks and hoists, air compressors and compressed
air pipes, chains, cables and hooks. Finishing employs hand hammers
and chisels, gang, circular, tubular and wire saws, surfacing and
polishing machines and lathes.
The power sources that operated this machinery – water turbines,
steam engines, electric generators, electric motors, shafts, pulleys,
and gears – primarily were constructed from iron and steel. In the
late-1800s, iron and steel replaced sand as the primary abrasive used
in granite finishing, including cast, chilled and broken iron shot,
and chilled and broken steel shot. Iron and steel also made possible
the granite-clad building that, in addition to the iron and steel
supporting framework, required iron anchors, clamps and pins to
hold the granite ashlars of the curtain wall to each other and to
the backing brick masonry. Finally, the primary movers of granite –
derricks, cableways, overhead cranes, locomotives, flatcars, and
gondola cars – all have a high content of iron and steel.
Early Egyptians, circa 3300 to 1200 BC, used copper saws and drills
with dry sand abrasive to cut and shape granite sarcophagi and blocks
for pyramids. This relatively soft metal wore out rapidly and required
frequent replacement. Iron was rarely found pure and almost always
was in combination with oxygen and, since the separation of iron
from its ore required smelting at a high temperature, this first
common man’s metal did not become available until much later than
copper. While the smelting of iron appeared early in Africa, China,
and India, knowledge of this process probably came to ancient Greece
from the Armenians and Chalybes of Asia Minor. By 1200 to 600 BC,
the Greeks were using hard iron axes, chisels, drills and saws for
quarrying and working stone. Not only did iron wear longer, it was
much less expensive than copper. Some of the iron tools used to work
stone for the classic Greek and Roman buildings and statuary still
are in use in today’s granite industry, with only minor modifications.
Many American granite-working machines had European and slate and
marble industry antecedents. The Aberdeen region of Scotland is
credited with originating the overhead traveling crane, the cableway
(Blondin) and the stone-cutting lathes that were introduced into and
improved by the American granite industry. Later, America reciprocated
by sending to Scotland the pneumatic carving tool and the "Jenny
Lind" polishing machine. Machinery that had earlier been designed by
such companies as F.R. Patch Co. and the Lincoln Iron Works, both of
Rutland, for slate and marble were redesigned into heavier and more
robust machines for the harder and more difficult to work granite.
The early village blacksmith worked in an agricultural community and
supplied local farmers with horse and ox shoes, with farming tools
such as axes, hoes, and plows, and with building materials, such as
nails, hinges and latches.
As the rapid growth of the Barre granite industry began in the 1880s,
some blacksmiths recognized the business potential and started to
make granite-working tools. For example, in 1885, blacksmith James
Ahern began the manufacture of tools in a shop on Granite Street that
evolved into Granite City Tool Co., Barre’s longest-operating granite
tool supplier. Ahern was the first Barre manufacturer of granite
cutting tools, and produced the first complete line of tools that,
by the 1910s, included striking hammers, bull sets, surface points,
surface bush hammers, bush chisels, hand points, hand chisels, hand
sets, hand chippers, bush hammers, scotia hammers, hand hammers, paving
cutter’s hammers, drills, tracers, and wedges and shims. James Ahern
claimed his tools were "tempered by a secret process in use 25 years."
During the late-1880s and early-1890s, five additional businesses were
established in Barre for the manufacture of granite working tools
– Hobbs & McDonald (1887), Ranney & Vaughn (1890), Brown & Kennedy
(1891), Marr & Thompson (1893) and McKenzie & Charles (1895). All were
short-lived, except for Hobbs & McDonald (renamed Barre Granite Tool
Works) that was purchased in 1891 by Clark Holden and John Trow. They
renamed the company Trow & Holden Co. and moved the operation into the
Stafford, Holden Manufacturing Co. plant on South Main Street. Some of
the machinery that had previously been used to manufacture hay forks
and manure forks was now used to manufacture granite-working tools.
Twenty-one-year-old Joshua Thwing purchased a flour mill in North
Barre in 1805 and added a machine shop and Vermont’s first foundry. The
Thwing Iron Works was enlarged in 1833 and finally sold to J.M. Smith,
W.E. Whitcomb and B.B. Cook in 1868. In the 1870s, Smith, Whitcomb &
Cook Co. started casting derrick irons for the Barre boom derrick
and manufacturing Barre’s first granite polishing machine. Smith,
Whitcomb & Cook later evolved into a manufacturer of a broad range of
granite-working machinery including Carborundum grinders, surfacing
machines and wire saws.
Finally, in the 1950s, the company was owned by a consortium of Barre
granite manufacturers. Vermont had a number of other foundries that
manufactured granite working and handling machinery. Some of the
other major Vermont foundries (with the most notable granite product
listed) were Lane Manufacturing Co. of Montpelier (overhead cranes),
Grearson-Lane Co. of Barre (lathes), Patch-Wegner Co. of Rutland
(polishing machines), Cooley-Wright Co. of Montpelier (polishing
machines), Lincoln Iron Works of Rutland (gang saws), and O.V. Hooker &
Sons of St. Johnsbury (derrick irons).
Jones Brothers had complete facilities for sharpening, tempering and
repairing iron and steel tools and for the design, manufacture and
repair of all but the most complex machinery. A sharpening room alcove,
attached to Shed No. 1 near a majority of the stonecutters, housed
six flat belt-driven five-foot diameter grinding wheels. Stonecutter
chisels and surfacer bush chisel cuts were sharpened on these wheels
under a constant flow of water by three grinder operators. (This alcove
was the site of the Jones Brothers’ blacksmith shop, circa 1900-1920,
and will be the location of the new operating blacksmith mentioned
earlier.) Tool boys shuttled the dulled tools to the sharpening room
and the sharpened tools back to the stonecutters. Jones Brothers also
owned a sharpening machine, manufactured by the Pirie Tool Sharpening
Machine Co. of Montpelier that was housed in Shed No. 3. This
specialized machine, designed by Willis A. Lane of Barre, sharpened
the 8-inch to 18-inch diameter cutting discs for the cutting lathes
and the McDonald mechanical surfacers. After sharpening on the Pirie
machine, the discs needed to be tempered and hardened by a blacksmith
at a forge and quenching tub. This involved heating the discs until
overall white, thereby producing a hard long-lasting cutting edge.
A freestanding Jones Brothers blacksmith shop, built around 1920
north of Shed No. 1, had two forges and anvils with an adjacent
brine tempering pit, pneumatic and belt-driven trip hammers, and an
oil-and-water tempering machine designed by Barre mechanic, Willis
A. Lane.
There were two blacksmiths – one specialized in sharpening, tempering
and repairing hand tools and the other specialized in sharpening
surfacing machine tooth chisels. (Before the era of the powered
grinding wheel for sharpening, stonecutter contracts called for
one blacksmith for every 10 to 15 stonecutters.) The blacksmith
shop could, when necessary, design and fabricate new tools. Jones
Brothers also had a fully equipped machine shop, staffed by two
full-time machinists, with a large lathe, two medium-size lathes,
a small fine work lathe, large and small belt-driven drill presses,
floor and hand-held grinders, welding tools, a steel-top welding
bench, wooden workbenches, and pigeonhole storage bins. The machine
shop could fabricate replacement parts for any of Jones Brothers’
granite-working machinery and pneumatic tools, and often designed and
built specialized custom machines such as suspended polishing machines,
diamond circular saws and machinery to manufacture chocolate rolls.
The Vermont Granite Museum is planning to move the historic
Anderson-Friberg Co. blacksmith shop from Willey Street to the
old Jones Brothers’ blacksmith shop building located south of Shed
No. 1. This second blacksmith shop will recreate an authentic granite
company shop of the early-1900s and will be for display only.
The AFCO shop is the gift of Bob Pope and the Swenson Granite Co. The
shop interior is unchanged from the 1950s, when it went into disuse,
probably due to the introduction of carbide-tip tools which require
only infrequent sharpening.
The shop includes a two-hearth brick forge with electric motor-driven
blower, two anvils, tool rack, quenching tub, post drill, heating
stove, tool crib and coal bin. A belt-driven trip hammer, grinder and
power hacksaw are powered by a single ceiling-mounted electric motor
through overhead shafting and pulleys. The blacksmith’s shirt stills
hangs on a wall hook and his safety glasses lay on a work bench –
as if he had just stepped out of the shop.