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  • Iron Against Granite

    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.
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