The Museum Collection: quarrying and stone-masons
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
.
Bradford on Avon Museum is building up a collection of the specialised tools that were used in quarrying stone, usually under the ground, or shaping the stone blocks in the workshop of a banker mason at the quarry and by a builder mason on site.
.
Click on the thumbnail pictures for a larger view
.
The head of a quarrier’s pick was found in a garden in Upper Westwood, where many of the men who worked underground in the stone quarries lived. Picks like this would have been used to cut a horizontal slot along the top of the bed of stone. That would allow a saw to be inserted, so that large blocks could be extracted. The original wooden handle would have been several feet long, to reach the back of the block. It has rotted away a long time ago; the present short one is new.
Once a slot has been picked out with the pick a long narrow saw, called a razzer, could be inserted and a vertical cut started. Once deep enough a much wider saw, called a frigbob, continued to cut down to the base. The wooden handle could be put in the top or bottom, to allow the saw to be used near the roof of the underground quarry. Frigbobs were also used by masons to cut stone into ashlar blocks, using the weight of the blade to do the work. Razzers were usually made from worn down frigbobs.
Once the block had been sawn down both sides, it was broken from the bed by wedges and could be hauled out. A chain lewis, a type of cramp that was used in lifting large heavy blocks of stone. A narrow slot was cut into the top of the block and the two curved pieces of the lewis were inserted back-to-back. When the crane pulled the chain the curved pieces were forced to bite into the sides of the slot and take the whole weight. There are other types of lewis.
Quarried blocks were cut up into thin squared ashlar blocks by heavy saws. A mason could shape and carve the stone. Calipers, or dividers, like these were used for measuring and for setting out distances and curves by scratching into the stone.
.
.
Set-squares, like these two examples, were also tools used in setting out work for cutting the stone. These are made of steel and of sheet zinc.
.
.
.
For setting out more complex shapes, such as mouldings for the cornices, string-courses, window-surrounds or brackets of a building the mason made templates, usually, like these, cut from a sheet of zinc, which is soft enough to be cut with shears.
.
.
Small hand saws could be used in roughing out stone for carving, or for fitting odd pieces into a building’s walls. Stone saws have large v-shaped teeth that are not offset like a woodworker’s saw. The cutting work is done on both strokes.
.
.
For shaping and carving stone the mason uses a variety of chisels; wide-bladed examples such as these bolsters can clear large areas of waste, or can be used to dress flat surfaces.
Narrower chisels are used for carving finer details.
.
.
.
Stone mason’s mallets are cylindrical, so that there is no need to keep the mallet facing in any particular direction and wear is evenly spread all round. They are usually quite heavy and made of fairly soft material. A metal hammer would damage the struck end of the chisel. The two here are of wood and of lead.
.
.
The finishing of a piece of carved or ashlar stonework was done using drags. These are pieces of hard steel, usually cut out of old saws. Used singly, or mounted in groups in slots in a piece of wood, they are dragged across the stone surface to remove rough areas. The small examples here have been made to drag more complex curved areas and have small teeth.
.
An example of intricate openwork carving in local limestone. It was probably part of a decorative garden wall.
.
. — — > Quarrying in the Bradford Hundred
.