From:
"Irwin Stone" <irwinstone@zzzzzzzzz>
Date:
Tue, 17 Jan 2006 07:47:53 -0500
Subject:
availability of stone
----- Original Message -----
Subject: [stone] availability of stone
Quoted text begins.I spent about three hours yesterday with the manager, a geological
engineer, in a Virginia granite quarry. I learned all kinds of
interesting things about the operation and quarries in general.
Probably the most striking thing he told me is that on average the
quarries in the world recover only about 10% of the stone, the rest
of it goes to trash.
End of quote.
Sounds like an interesting experience Norman.
Care to share specifics of which quarry?
Judging by the very small yeild to waste ratio, I assume they produce only
blocks for the dimensional stone market.
The only active granite quarries I have visited in person only produce
rubble for building stone / landscape stone application. Their yeild % is
much higher, but they also end up with an incredible amount of non
marketable tailings.
I spent a week in Vermont a few years ago. I visited both the Danby White
Marble and the VT Verde Antique Serpentine quarries. I did not get a guided
tour, as I neglected to make contact in advance with the proper folks. The
Danby quarry looked to be accumilating a huge amount of tailings. OTOH, the
Serpentine quarry appeared to be very efficiently sawing nice clean blocks.
Looking down in the Serpentine pit, it was very interesting to see the
change in the walls of the quarry as it gets deeper. In the older upper
sections it steps down very roughly. Deeper down in the newer areas, the
cuts are very geometric & clean, a sign of how cleanly the newer quarry saws
are able to extract this hard & fragile stone.
I was able to pick up a few nice momento tailing peices in the woods
adjoining the quarry. I made 1 nice freeform 'object' which now sits on
table in my home. It's certainly not a sculpture nor peice of fine art, but
it's definately a beautiful conversation peice.
David Modine
- Follow-ups
- message 00118: availability of stone - Norman Watts (17 Jan 2006)
- References
- message 00086: pietrasanta-advice needed - VisualThinker7 (13 Jan 2006)
- message 00089: pietrasanta-advice needed - Walter S. Arnold (13 Jan 2006)
- message 00115: availability of stone - Norman Watts (17 Jan 2006)
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