Can you swim in that quarry? When I was teaching school in Stockbridge MA in 1981, several miles south of town there was a marble quarry that filled w COLD water that was a great, giant swimming pool. I took my "farm program" students there in my '79 Power Wagon into the woods on an abondoned rr bed, then hiked thru the woods and over a stream, past rusting quarry equip & small ga. RR tracks and huge blocks of cut marble. The sides of the quarry provided lots of ledges from cut blocks for sunning on or daring jumps into the water. Top promentory we (some of us) jumped from is 53' above the water. My students were "special needs, in trouble" kids - we built a barn, raised animals, logged some of the school's 600 acres and cut firewood for all the dorms' fireplaces, grow a garden, build a greenhouse, cook all our meals. I taught many of these teenagers to use a chainsaw, plus other building tools, and safely with no injuries. Our main job as staff was to teach them about life and to help them grow up. They taught me a lot too.
Some of your pics of your home & garden reminded me of the school and of my present home. Looks like you got a good life Tim.
Steve

One can swim in the quarries, plenty of water. There is a story of a fellow a few years back who cracked his head on a rock while diving. He was a troubled youth, he spent a number of minutes under water before they found him. It's said he came out of the water a different person. I never participated in the parties the quarries held but heard plenty of stories. Your story has a positive educational twist to it. I will see if I can get a photo of the larger quarry, with the Jonesboro Red granite. Tim

Interesting.

I have heard of the top course of nicely split, rectangular foundation granite called "tip-ups" Here in Waldoboro, Maine, we had a granite quarring boom in the 1880-1890s and some large barns of this period had huge granite blocks including "tip-ups". Usually barns around here do not have the tip-ups, but there are plenty of big stones, dry laid, and it is extremely rare to see the sill bedded in lime mortar. Almost all old houses here have the tip-ups.

I have heard that "the ground grows" and buildings sink. It is a fairly common problem for part of a barn to be "underground", and, of course, in need of repair. Some small ground barns and sheds seem to have been set on rocks laid as shallow as a plow could dig. Some of these foundations hold up for hundreds of years, as long as the ground is not saturated with water. Foundations being "heaved" inward or downhill by the expansion of frozen groundwater (frost heave) is a common problem.

Jim

I work with granite a fair amount and pick it up at a Concord quarry on occasion, the one you can see (look for the derricks) off on a rise to the east of the city from I93

They slab huge blocks into thinner pieces with a giant circ saw, maybe a 14' blade, it makes multiple shallow water cooled cuts, guessing it might be taking a 1/4" per pass, dropping down into the block hour upon hour, day in day out. Multiple automated saws in multiple sheds cutting with little or no human supervision.

Guessing again, that the pictured piece was cut in that fashion and somewhere in the process the saw broke down and left those mill marks ???

I see lots of granite in both house and barn foundations, and though this is only an observation, quarried granite becomes less frequent the father you get from the quarries. It disappears from barn except for maybe piers in manure bays, and is used only on the street side in house foundations. I believe this probably had to do with the expense of transport which must have been charged by the mile.

Quick edit - Mostly about direction and spelling.

I work with granite a fair amount and pick it up at a Concord quarry on occasion, the one you can see (look for the derricks) off on a rise to the west of the city from I-93

They slab huge blocks into thinner pieces with a giant circ saw, maybe a 14' blade, it makes multiple shallow water cooled cuts, guessing it might be taking a 1/4" per pass, dropping down into the block hour upon hour, day in day out. Multiple automated saws in multiple sheds cutting with little or no human supervision.

Guessing again, that the pictured piece was cut in that fashion and somewhere in the process the saw broke down and left those mill marks ???

I see lots of granite, in both house and barn foundations, and though this is only an observation, quarried granite becomes less frequent the farther you get from the quarries. It disappears from barns except for maybe piers in manure bays, and likewise becomes less common in house foundations and is used only on the street side. I believe this probably had to do with the expense of transport which must have been charged by the mile.

Will, a wire saw was used here, am still looking forward to seeing it. The operation here is but a sliver of a larger company from away.

The next photo is of a tip-up tipped down. No mortar just loose flat stone, granite, under the tip-up. They were laid neatly. It took no effort to lay the large stone down. Tim

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