sawing, the sequel

Quoted text begins.scraping of knuckles became too painful to carry on
End of quote.

Hi Tony, I have experienced the pain of scraping knuckles, I try to lift my
shoulders when I walk >:-(

Seriously though, the use of handsaws is almost unheard of where I live.
Apart from areas in the south and west of the country, the soft stone is too
abrasive and the hard stone too crystalline for hand sawing.

A few years ago, I helped a friend saw joints in 30mm granite cladding to
relieve pressure on the wall slabs in a bank. The pressure was caused by
structural concrete shrinkage transferred to the cladding, causing one large
piece to fall into the main banking chamber, and many others to bow outward.
Most of the work was done with a 4" angle grinder, but where vertical
windows abutted the cladding we had to use Angel Wire to saw the horizontal
joints.

Angel Wire is diamond-encrusted high tensile wire (we used a 1 metre
length), and as it had been used recently for a mass jailbreak, my mate had
to get police clearance to buy the stuff (don't know how he got permission
to use it in a bank). He got it from Diamant-Boart, now part of Dimas,
referred to in my original reply in this thread.

Well, the point of all this is just to say that the 2 hand-operated Angel
Wire (coarse grade) cut very easily through granite.
I've no experience with Bath Stone (a great site here:
http://bathstonequarries.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/ I'm sure that your hand
sawing methods work well in Bath Stone, but for a one-off cut in harder
marble or even granite, maybe some Angel Wire (guided by a timber stud
clamped each side of the cut) could be an alternative solution.

Regards,
Simon moonsong[AT]optusnet.com.au