Polishing granite columns

["George Graham" <georgergraham@zzzzzzzzzzz>]

Simon,
About 25 years ago I was in a monument producers shop that still polished
slabs the old way. A man ran hand polisher with a cast iron concentric wheel
that was 4 feet in diameter. The neat thing was that the used  carborundum
grit was pumped up to the top of a set of shelves , and the used and broken
grit would separate into different levels as it ran down from the top level
to the bottom.
There was one man who only ran the big polisher. He had a system the was
very efficient and fast.
The people there swore that their polish was the "best". I've seen polished
slabs the new way and compared them with old slabs , ( using the same kind
of granite ), and there is no doubt that the old way worked just as well,
but the knowledge of how to do it is disappearing fast as the old timers
pass on. The mass production technology has  changed the way we do things.
The old ways were sort of like secret recipes, and varied from man to man.
George Graham