Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1895-01-10
MINING WHITEl MARBLE.
THE GREEN MOUNTAINS HONEY
CoMBED WITH QUARRIEs.

The Largest Opening In the World is
In VermOnt-The Diamond Drill
Revolutionized the Industry.
V|ERMONT furnishes more than
" sixty per cent. of the marble
Y used in the United States
for building purposes, and
almost all that goes into graveyards
and public monuments, and the
greater per cent. of the Vermont mar
bic comes from Rutland County. The
man who first discovered the possibili-
ties of the quarries in Rutland County
traded an old horse for the property.
The original Lowner had become dis
gusted with the land, for nothing
would grow on it, and he swapped O
fortune for decrepit nag which was
dear at SIS. The gold craze of '49
urged men to risk their lives and en-
dure the greatest hardships to
find the yellow metal, and the marble
craze in Vermont which followed the
discovery of the rich deposits of pure
white marble caused men to pour
money into holes and sink fortunes in
the ground. The Green Mountains
are pock-marked with abandoned
quarries, and the quest for the for
tune which awaited man at the bot
tom of rich marble quarry sent
prospectors into New Hampshire and
all along the backbone of the Green
Mountain State.
Until the diamond drill was invented
prospecting for marble was almost
always a matter of ..guess-work. But
the faithful detective which bores its
way into the earth's crust and brings
back piece of everything 1t touches
placed marble-hunting in the list of
exact sciences. The diamond drill is
o cylinder of steel which has black
diamonds fixed in the edge of its cut
ting surface. The diamond-studded
cylinder is driven into the earth or
outcropping stone, and as it twists its
way farther into the crust it cuts out
core which enables the prospector to
judge of the quality of the marble. if
the drill goes through marble, and the
extent of the deposit. Sometimes,
however, the enthusiastic prospector
and his moneyed men who are back of
the enterprise are sadly fooled by the
diamond drill, for the drill might be
bored in the direction of the layer
and not through it. If the layer is
thin, and the drill bored with the
grain, the core might indicate thick
deposit, and the truth would not be
known until thousands of dollars had
been spent in opening the quarry.
Over 100000 has been expended in
opening quarry before o single dol
lars worth Of marketable stone was
taken out.
When all the tests show that the
marble is there, and enough of it to
pay for the working, the top rock,
usually of limestone, is first stripped
of. Blasting powder and dynamite
are employed in stripping the quarry,
but the blasts are small, and the quarry
men proceed carefully, for if the
powder should penetrate the marble it
would do serious damage. When the
top stone is cleared away and the top
layer of marble is exposed, channeling
machines similar to those which are
at work in the rock cut of the sanitary
canal are started. They are worked
by steam or compressed air, and they
travel back and forth, cutting the
marble into the widths required.
Sometimes the diamond borer, or
quick acting diamond drill, is used to
slice up the marble. 1t makes holes
near together, the holes being con-
nected by webs of marble. These
borers revolve about 1900 times q
minute and when the marble is not
too hard work rapidly. When the
channeling machines, or diamond
borers, have cut the marble into slices
the stone is cut away at either end so
that the quarrymen can get at the
bottom OF the layers that have been
cut. Then steam-drills bore holes
into the bottom of the layer from
eight inches to foot apart. Iron or
steel wedges are placed in these bot
tom holes and driven in until the
whole block of marble is broken away
from its bed and lifted up. Some
times blocks or strips forty to sixty
feet long are thus cut out of the solid
rock. The huge block is divided into
blocks of the required size by boring
holes and breaking it with iron wedges.
Ii slabs or tiles are wanted the smaller
blocks are taken to the saw and sawed
into strips. Several strips are sawed
at once. The saw is made of steel
strips without teeth. They play back
and forth over the block and cut the
stone by means of the sand and water
which are continually fed under the
metal strips.
The marble quarries of Rutland lie
in valley and extend ever an area OF
only about half q mile square. The
layers uncovered vary in thickness
from two to ten feet. In this limited
space the best marble is quarried, but
marble is found over q large extent OF
Vermont. The farther south from
Rutland the marble is the coarser.
grained it is. On the other hand, the
marble found north of Rutland il