The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1900-12-14
QUEER USES OF CANNON BALLS
Condemned as War Weapons, but All
Right in Stone Quarries.

Condemned as War Weapons. but All
Right in Stone Quarries.
Cannon balls for blasting!:
This sign hung in conspicuous place
before the door of a store in Atlantic
avenue led a reporter inside and started
a bit of questioning upon the subject,
says the Boston GLOBE.
The proprietor said: Last fall when
the United States government sold all
OF the old cannon balls and solid shot
when Tor SO many years were piled in
pyramids along the main street Of the
navy-yard at Charlestown we purchased
lot OF them with little thought of con.
verting them into anything besides pig
iron. But few weeks after we had
stored them here I overheard a quarry
owner complaining Of the slowness and
uncertainty OF the old system of steel
wedglng. used in getting out huge blocks
of granite, and after bit of thought
L suggested the use of cannon balls in
the place of the steel wedges. We sent
about twenty of various sizes and
weights out to his quarry, and after the
first trial he hurried a team in here with
a note that read:
Tried the cannon balls; they are it.
Send fifty more; have thrown the steel
wedges away
THE experience of this man led us to
send the cannon balls and solid shot to
other quarry operators. and within the
last month the orders have been coming
in so thickly that we can hardly fill them
from the stock on hand.
1.-The method used in getting out great
cubes or monoliths from the granite and
marble quarries has been to drive steel
wedges along the line of the lower portion
of the split made by the blast until the
great chunk of stone topples over on its
face.
1T required a deal of time and num-
Der of men with big iron sledges and
steel wedges to separate these cubes
from the quarry wall from which they
had been started by the blast.
THE method now pursued with the
cannon balls is to start the block of stone
away by slight blast and then between
the quarry face and the block several Of
the smaller shot usually the four-inch
sort, are dropped down into the aperture.
Two men with crowbars give the block
a little shake and the instant the block
moves in the slightest manner forward
the shot takes up their purchase on the
space made, when the large cannon balls,
some measuring fourteen or fifteen
inches and weighing 200 or 300 pounds,
are dropped into the top of the gap. Now
the slightest outward jar by levers on
the big stone sends these heavy cannon
balls dropping downward of their own
weight, until, with an easy forward
movement. the cube goes over on it's face.
'These shot do away with any driving:
of necessity their great weight in proper
ton to their size forces them downward
and their form prevents any chance Of
backward setting of the block.
''These cannon balls are also used as
rollers, as they take up and go over the
inequalities of the quarry surface and
! can be rolled in any direction without re-
setting. thus doing away with the old
style wooden rollers.
''They are also used to smother heavy
| tearingout blasts. Heavy rope mats are
| thrown over the surface where the blast
has been set and these cannon balls are
| thrown on the mats