Reed Quarry (and local flowers)

I needed a block of limestone for the Charles City commission of a little girl reading, so I visited Reed Quarry in Bloomington, Indiana to pick out a block of stone.

I had already contacted the owner of the quarry, Steve Reed, with the dimensions of the block that I needed. When I got there, he had just pulled the stone from the pit. Steve Reed is standing next to the block. I looked it over; it is a very nice, clean block that will work excellently for the sculpture. There is a lot of stone to remove - that will be handled at the studio with our diamond-bladed chainsaw...

To help round out the load, I needed to find a stone around 8 tons. The total load ended up around 22 tons, which is about the legal limit for hauling over the road. This stone is known as a roughback for it's odd shape. Steve Reed oversees moving the stone so that I can get a better look at it. It weighs 7 1/2 tons - just what I'm looking for.

After I picked out the stones, I watched the turning of a 250 ton ledge of stone. A chainsaw with a ten foot long bar makes cuts down through the stone. It makes cuts about 50 feet long as it moves down a track. Then, that track is moved over by 4 feet to free the next ledge. The stone is then drilled at the base and wedges are hammered into the drill holes, this cracks the stone across at the base.
The quarrymen remove the wedges prior to turning the ledge.

A bulldozer lays out a bed of rubble so that the ledge won't break when it falls.

The cables of the crane are attached through pulleys attached to the ledge and down to the bottom of the pit. The crane then takes in the cables so the ledge will fall over onto the stone rubble.
Halfway there...

And suddenly, the ledge has turned, dropping onto the stone rubble. It is now ready to be drilled into manageable sized blocks and lifted out of the pit.

And now for something completely different - flowers This is an Aster just opening.

A super closeup of an Iris at the studio.

One of Liz's (my sister) Roses.

Insects in a Sycamore bloom.