At The Mill

Processing and Machinery

Once marble blocks have been cut in the quarries and transported into and around the marble yards, they travel between and are processed by different mills and workers depending on the product they are to be made into.

A marble block that is going to be made into countertop material, for example, is treated differently than one meant to be used for masonry construction or another for memorial headstones.

Ultimately, milling is the process of removing unwanted material, whether it be cutting blocks into separate smaller pieces or simply "removing" material by buffing or polishing it to achieve a certain finish.

Gangsaw compartments at mill in West Rutland, VT

Typical track arrangement at a marble mill according to Bowles

Click to see Advice on the Layout and Placement of a Marble Mill

"A shop should be built both substantial and convenient. In the first place, a marble man should not attempt to build a shop above his means, and, in finishing up, find his finances short, and then stop for a while, leaving it partly built.

Select a site that is in the business portion of the town, a corner lot if possible, even if you only have 22 feet, it will do. If your shop is built on one of the principal streets, more people will pass your shop and there will be persons “drop in”.

It is not necessary to build a shop more than one story high, unless a man wants to live or rent for offices, but, as a general thing, marble workers make too much noise below to be good for offices, or even to live above with a family-especially in times of sickness.

The first room should be for finished work and office. It should have a high ceiling, twelve feet, and the ceiling should be tinted a sky blue and the balance a light pink, which will make the work show to good advantage. It should have a good substantial oak floor 1 ½ inches in thickness with good, heavy joist, one foot apart and well bridged. Have the front door (double) made with glass sash, so as to admit as much light as possible. Two large windows will do.

The second room, which should be used for lettering and polishing need not be so large or the ceiling so high but with a floor equally as substantial. A piece, something similar to the ordinary chair board, should be placed in the wall while building; also, some well made boxes, placed in the wall, for tools, with lock and key’ each cutter to have his own box. The polisher can be protected by a skeleton partition with a guard wing to prevent stray chips from interfering.

The third room, to be used to do rough cutting, finished same as the second room, only not so large. The windows of this room should be protected by wire screens. With a good cistern at the rear end of the shop, there will be no necessity of carrying water and soft water is best for marble.

To make work show off to the best advantage, place it in a circular form in the shop, with aisles running around each way from the door. When you deliver any work, never leave the place vacant, but fill up the vacancy, even if you have to move the others stones around a little."

(Advice from The Marble and Granite Workers' Guide, 1900)

Sand

Especially before the invention of diamond-point tools, the only way to cut through marble blocks was to have sand and water run over "saw blades" or smooth metal bands that moved back and forth. This sand acted as the "teeth" we would associate with sawblades today to cut through the stone. It required an immense amount of power, water, and sand to cut through such a hard stone as marble.

Tramway carrying sand to top of a mill in West Rutland in 1923

Worker carting sand inside mill in 1923

"In the days of the old mill, a few teams could haul all the sand that was needed. When the business began to increase, a short tramway was constructed, but the buckets soon began to come back empty. Finally, the cable was extended for two-and-a-quarter miles over the mountain to a larger deposit. It now [1929] brings in sand at the rate of 500 lbs every 28 seconds." (Little Pictures of a Big Industry)

Sawing

The primary problem to be solved in running a quarry throughout the years of the industry was determining the most efficient way to cut and therefore be able to transport the material. Though the marble was cut in the quarry into large blocks, most marble was not sold by the block and had to be further cut into useable pieces and slabs to leave as finished product. This was often accomplished by gangsaws, or several blades attached to a single frame.

Before the use of steam and electricity to power saws, Fred Patch describes in his history of the marble industry the use of "old style pendulum gangs"; making use of counterweights to saw back and forth. These pendulum gangs were later replaced with the machinery of pulleys and belts.

Illustration of early gangsaw mill compartments

Gangsaw at Gantt's mill in AL

Gangsaw run by worker in the 1950s

Gangsaw compartments in mill

Diamond rim saws

Although records exist from ancient times of the use of diamonds as parts of tools for their superhard quality, they were hard to come by especially before the widespread manufacturing of machine tools in the late 19th century.

Around this time, the first versions of diamond saws were manufactured. Not only could diamonds be fixed to blades as teeth hard enough to cut through stone, but particles could also be applied to tools like grinding wheels. Ultimately, the use of diamond tools in the United States led to a shift away from sand feed pumps for stone cutting tools.

To learn more, see the page on Diamond Tools by Science Direct and its associated resources.

Rubbing

Slabs and blocks of marble cut to their approximate size are "squared" and finished on a "rubbing bed" or a horizontal circular bed made of cast iron revolving at a moderate speed. Most beds were driven by means of a "countershaft" and gears though some had gears underneath. Slabs placed on the revolving disk are worn down and smoothed with sand and water applied to the disk until reaching the desired dimensions.

Workers with various rubbing and polishing beds

Other Aspects of Milling

A variety of other functions were accomplished by workers and machinery in the mills. Planing involves the movement of a piece of stone against a stationary tool, as opposed to "shaping" which involves the stone in a stationary position while a tool moves against it. Boring is the enlargement of a preexisting drill hole.

To learn more about the various types of treatment of materials, see milling.

Ad for iron planer in Compressed Air magazine

Worker polishing and shaping a column

Worker using a carborundum cutting machine to groove and bevel edges

Ad for equipment manufacturing company Ingersoll-Rand in Compressed Air Magazine

Pneumatic tools use compressed air to power tools like drills, though compressed air drills weren't widely used in the United States until the 1870s.

Since then, pneumatic drills and tools have been integral to quarrymen and stone carvers on varying scales.

To learn more about specific developments in mining, drilling, and quarrying machinery, see drilling machinery and its associated pages.

Finishing

Stone pieces are "finished" by a team of skilled craftsmen before being shipped out of the marble yards, often by train. This may involve polishing large slabs or blocks of stone for construction purposes or more detailed carving depending on the marble product's intended use.

To learn more about marble finishes today, see How Marble Is Extracted.

Polishing marble

Hand carving flowers on a marble memorial

"Finishes of Exterior Marble" from The Book of Vermont Marble (1920)

"Sand Finish - This finish is the one most commonly specified. It brings out to the greatest degree the natural veining of the marble. It is put on by rubbing the stone by hand, using coarse sea sand.

Tooled Finish - Where a rougher finish is desired, tooling is often specified. The work is done by hand or by a special tool used in the planer. In either case the effect is that of a slightly corrugated surface. The lines are continuous and are regularly spaced.

Axed Finish - This is also known as hammered finish. It is the usual granite finish. It is distinguished from tooled finish by the fact that the lines are finer, nearer together and somewhat irregular.

Chisel Finish - This is a special finish put on with the pneumatic tool. Designed as it is for monumental work, it is not adapted to large structures. It is recommended, however, for mausoleums or other memorial work.

Rock Face - This, as the name implies, is a very rough finish. After the pieces are sawed, the faces are split off by hand, leaving the stone with its natural surface. The work is done in such a way as to leave the stone somewhat thicker at the center than at the beds and joints."

(The Book of Vermont Marble 1920)

Finishing shop interior in 1920

Finishing Shop in Center Rutland

3D Hand Tools

This is a thin toothed chisel, or one of the marble working hand tools used to shape and break apart stone.

To see more hand tools from the Vermont Marble Co. as scanned by the Vermont State University Digital Archaeology Project, see "Vermont Marble Industry Artifacts".

To learn about how mills and other machinery were powered, see A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780-1930.

To learn about transporting marble beyond the marble yards once finished, see Railroads and the Marble Industry.

References

“Drilling machinery | Types, Uses & Benefits.” Britannica, July 2025, https://www.britannica.com/technology/drilling-machinery#ref93871.

“From Quarry to Cemetery Monuments.” Stone Quarries and Beyond, Accessed 2025, https://quarriesandbeyond.org/cemeteries_and_monumental_art/quarry_to_cemetery_stone/stone_mills_shops_interior_equipment.html.

“Vermont Quarry and Related Business Links and Photographs.” Stone Quarries and Beyond. Accessed 2025. https://quarriesandbeyond.org/states/vt/vermont-photos_menu.html.

Little Pictures of a Big Industry. Vermont Marble Company, 1920. https://archive.org/details/littlepicturesof00verm/page/22/mode/2up.

Skerrett, Robert G. “Vermont’s Varied Marbles: Origin of These Age-Old Deposits and the Splendid Industry that has Developed in Exploiting Them” in Compressed Air Magazine, v. 31, 1926, Proctoriana Collection. Vermont Historical Society Leahy Library, Barre, VT.

U.S. Bureau of Mines. The Technology of Marble Quarrying. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1916. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=kb8kjgYH26UC&pg=GBS.PR10&hl=en.

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