Granite or Sandy Loam??

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by Acadianlion

Sure. We're a very small operation, and as I am writing this, we are in a major change phase. I may end up being bought out and if so I will be able only to direct your inquiry to the new owners. I won't know exactly what the timing or schedule will be for a while, but the "end of the summer" might work. I am not sure whether the new owners will even keep the Slot Liner, but I would assume so, and I am also not certain whether the Slot Liner will be in use or just sitting there toward the latter months of the summer. Right now the schedule is to operate the Slot Liner in October for two weeks, but that could change.

Drop me a line in early August and I'll let you know what is happening.

Acadianlion
Thanks for the quick answer , besides seeing Your Quarry in operation , I was also looking forward to meeting You .
We keep trying to come up to Maine camping , but I am getting all kinds of distractions .
Yesterday I got a call to to check out a 100 Hp. Joy Recip. compressor , they blew the motor , My Daughter and I spent all morning taking the Stator off the motor and dropping it off at a motor shop . they est. $4400 to repair it.
Also while it is down , why don't I do the rings and valves and bearings too.
How are We supposed to enjoy our summer ?
Bob
Ps
At least if We can make the Lobster festival , I will be able to buy more then one dinner .

[stevenlear]

I visited the quarry this morning. Nice operation, nice people, beautiful stone at a fair price. I am thrilled to have "found" Sullivan Stone Works and look forward to enjoying their product in and around my home for years to come.

Please make every effort to keep this local business busy and thriving. We need more of this to strengthen our economy. Mainers keeping Mainers working!

Thanks to AcadianLion and to Gib!

Steve

[moughie]

Glad you found what you were looking for, stevenlear. I would love to visit his quarry sometime.

I have no doubt that Acadianlion has a professional operation with excellent quality material. We are lucky to have him as a member on our forum! And Maine is lucky to have such a high caliber businessman!

[Murphie]

I tired to sendl you a direct messsage but apparently that did not work. I'll be in the Ellsworth area next week and am looking for stone for a family member's memorial. How can I contact you?

Thanks

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by Murphie

I tired to sendl you a direct messsage but apparently that did not work. I'll be in the Ellsworth area next week and am looking for stone for a family member's memorial. How can I contact you?

Thanks

Sorry. I didn't receive the direct message. Many things have happened over the past year and a half. During the winter of 2007-08, it became obvious that 2008 was not going to be a productive year for quarrying or for stone sales in general. I made a decision to complete the projects that we had on hand, and await developments.

On June 30,2008, we shut down all operations at the quarry and will not reopen.

It was a difficult decision to make, but at the end of the day, the cost of hiring and maintaining employees, the cost of diesel fuel for equipment and the equipment costs themselves made the venture impossible, with the final blow the precipitous decline in the economy.

Today the quarry is for sale and we have three companies interested in making offers. I intend for the entire parcel to be sold and gone by the end of summer, which appears to be a reasonable goal. Life moves on.

I will make one comment about the state of employment in basic materials industries in Maine, and about the general state of the work force as we found it in eastern Hancock County. Both are extremely poor.

First of all, the state of Maine generally doesn't regard basic materials work to be "desirable". There are financing plans available for business development, but if you are employing "blue collar" workers doing certain types of jobs...stone cutting is one...then there is little interest or sympathy for that sort of employment.

Stone cutting requires a certain type of person. It isn't necessary for that person to be a giant with bulging biceps. Rather it does require that the worker be alert, able to think clearly beyond next Fridays paycheck, a rack of beer and a pizza. The average framer on a carpentry crew would probably not be a suitable candidate for modern day stonework: stone workers need to like being outside, sometimes in difficult climate, and able to maintain focus on the task at hand and the work going on around him/her.

Under Federal law an employee must complete a 24 hour training course within 90 days of working in a quarry. Eight hours of mine specific training must be completed technically before the employee can set foot in the quarry. In addition to that, the employer must maintain two separate kinds of noise attenuation equipment on site for the employee to chose from as well as other types of safety gear including respiratory equipment and equipment. Plus the employee must have a hearing examination each year. And so on: it isn't OSHA that has any impact on this industry: it is MSHA...the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

It really takes ninety days for an employee to gain sufficient experience to be of value in the quarry. In a small operation such as ours was, this makes the value of each employee who receives traning to be very high, but it also means that we must hire only the best and the brightest. Those people were impossible to find or to attract where we were located. The bottom line for us was that we were simply too small to be competitive beyond our basic level,a nd we could not remain viable at that basic level unless we could obtain financial assistance from the State or other business development enterprises to enable that growth. When the economy collapsed, so also did our aspirations.

Finally, we found some potential employees who thought far too highly of their own abilities to be of value. One fellow was an experienced stone mason who really seemed to want to come to our operation. Indeed, as an employer we did everything to make it a good place to work, including giving days off when the weather was bad while still paying a weekly salary. Year end bonusses were as much as three month's wages, which I though was pretty good for a start up company. Anyway, this one fellow who had experience building chimneys and handling stone offered to come to work for us, and he "only" wanted $50 per hour! (That was what he claimed to make when he was making chimneys. Of course, he was NOT working when he visited the quarry to talk about a job!).

So the bottom line is that I have spent five years and a lot of money to try to develop a basic materials business that would provide employment for as many as five people year round in eastern Maine. I failed. I lacked sufficient resources to take the company up onto the next step, and the collapse of our entire national economy finished off the good intentions. I spent two summmers working the quarry as a stone cutter apprentice, and I can tell some interesting stories about what it is like to be on the bottom rung in such an industry, and I can also certify that that sixteen pound sledge hammer weighs 16 pounds at seven in the morning when you are sixty years of age. And by one in the afternoon, that same hammer weighs eighty-seven pounds! And I won't bore you by telling stories about how many times I hit the back of my hand with a three pound hammer when the stonechisel moved....BEEN THERE: DONE THAT!

It was a great experience and brought great riches to my life in terms of experience. I may never see the money that I invested of my own again, and had I any inkling that the business might fail as a part of a much larger economic collapse, I wouldn't have tried it. But end the end I have first hand learned one very important thing. The one thing that we need to learn as a nation, is that it is important for there to be a climate that encourages ALL labor and ALL workforce in ALL industries, and that we had better start to push more and more support toward the small business that hires one, two, five, ten, or perhaps twenty workers in diverse locations, and in small businesses that service perhaps a small area. Those small businesses will likely be able to continue to operate and provide some employment when the big corporations contract, close plants and lay off workers in tough times.

While I'd love to sell you a monument stone of some sort, I can't. While there is much stone available in the quarry, none of it is cut or prepped for anything, and there is no longer any sort of heavy lift equipment available to move anything.

[forest beekeeper]

Acadianlion -

Good post.

It is sad to see your attempts fail, I has been hoping that you would succeed.

May God bless you.

[Murphie]

I am very sorry to hear your business plan did not go forward...you have an unusual, but wonderful vision. That rings a bell for me, and so as an aside I'll ask: did you ever buy an Audi wagon on ebay?

Regardless, I'm still in need of stone for a monument and since you know the business in Maine I'm wondering if you could offer some advice.

I live in the DC area and around here the "monument dealers" don't seem to know, or more likely don't want to talk about, where their stone comes from. I suspect its China.

The monument is for someone -my wife- who loved the down east part of the Maine coast, her best memories were often between Ellsworth and Lubec. Maine granite seems very appropriate; I guess I could visit the quarries in Stonington and Deer Isle next week and see if they could refer me to retailers.

Do you have any other suggestions that could help?

Thanks again

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by Murphie

I am very sorry to hear your business plan did not go forward...you have an unusual, but wonderful vision. That rings a bell for me, and so as an aside I'll ask: did you ever buy an Audi wagon on ebay?

Regardless, I'm still in need of stone for a monument and since you know the business in Maine I'm wondering if you could offer some advice.

I live in the DC area and around here the "monument dealers" don't seem to know, or more likely don't want to talk about, where their stone comes from. I suspect its China.

The monument is for someone -my wife- who loved the down east part of the Maine coast, her best memories were often between Ellsworth and Lubec. Maine granite seems very appropriate; I guess I could visit the quarries in Stonington and Deer Isle next week and see if they could refer me to retailers.

Do you have any other suggestions that could help?

Thanks again

LOL. yes, I have bought several vehicles on eBay. In fact all of the vehicles that I own now, and have owned for several years have come either from eBay or from someother on line source. Last October, I bought a "new" truck on eBay. This was a low mileage 3/4 Ton GMC from Massachusetts that had had few New England winters...a '97 that had 82,000 miles. And the last Audi that I purchased was on eBay also, a 1990 V8 from a dealer in the Pittsburg area that I went out to haul back in May of '08: 62,000 miles and original. These may well be my last vehicles.

I want to ask what kind of monument you are thinking about. If you are thinking of a "real" cemetary monument, then your options are a bit limited in so far as Maine granite is concerned. One place to try would be Fresh Water Stone in Orland. They harvest their own stone from Mosquito Mountain in Frankfort, and saw their stone in their plant on Route One in Orland. Fine company, and they might be able to make something for you, or they might have something suitable in stock.

If you want a rough piece of Maine stone that will stand upright and be engraved, I can send you to a fellow in Sullivan who can use Sullivan granite to make a free form monument. Let me know, and I will give you his name and number lately.

We did a free form monument shaped roughly like the state of Maine, six feet tall, for installation at Indian Point Park in Ellsworth. The stone was to commemorate a Rotary member who was instrumental in developing the parking lot at the park, but who had died suddenly. I don't have a picture of the monument here, but it came out pretty well. The lettering and Rotary symbol were put into the stone by the fellow that I would recommend. It is all possible to do.

When we made monuments for people our process was to send a block to Canada where it was sawn and polished in the appropriate sizes and shapes. Then when it was returned, we sent the block to an artisan stone worker who carves names or othe rengravings into the stone.

we also created the big sign announcing the entrance to the Schoodic Natiional Scenic Byway at the Taunton River parking lot on Route ONe in Hancock. This seven ton stone began as a piece of glacial polished granite that was shaped to resemble Schoodic Mountain, and engraved in the quarry. I will try to link a picture of that monument here, but if I can't I will send it to the list as a separate item.

[Murphie]

I am looking for a conventional monument, not too big or anything, cut and polished. I'll stop and take a look at the two pieces in Ellsworth and Handcock to get an idea about the Sullivan, though I'm presuming they are not polished. I suppose if I'm really set on it I could follow your process and have a rough piece of Sullivan shipped to someone for cutting and polishing, and then the final touches maybe locally with the installer.

I sent an email to Freshwater and see what they have to say.

And yes, I sold my black 1991 200TQV wagon about seven years ago to a fellow from Ellsworth, I'm guessing it was you.

Thanks for your help.

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by Murphie

I am looking for a conventional monument, not too big or anything, cut and polished. I'll stop and take a look at the two pieces in Ellsworth and Handcock to get an idea about the Sullivan, though I'm presuming they are not polished. I suppose if I'm really set on it I could follow your process and have a rough piece of Sullivan shipped to someone for cutting and polishing, and then the final touches maybe locally with the installer.

I sent an email to Freshwater and see what they have to say.

And yes, I sold my black 1991 200TQV wagon about seven years ago to a fellow from Ellsworth, I'm guessing it was you.

Thanks for your help.

\

Oh, yes. It was your car. I enjoyed that car emensely and would love to find another one. I performed all the necessary fixes on the car that were outstanding, and drove it well, eventually selling it to a guy in the southern part of the state when it was going to cost more to prep it for inspection than I could justify. In the end, I believe he parted the car out. The 20Valve Type 44 Audis are getting pretty rare now, unfortunately, and if I find another one that has relatively low miles and a decent service record I will be sorely tempted to buy it.