German stone cutters making millstones

Video is in German, but somehow I ended up watching it and the succeeding one. Those guys were some tough old birds,and they sure had an eye for the grain of the stone.

YouTube

This longer 48 minute version shows the smith re-pointing and hardening the tools, plus lots of sandstone grinding wheels being handmade.

YouTube

Caption: Grindstones for the iron industry of the Bergisches Land are extracted from the sandstone quarry in the South Eifel. Using stone hammers, wedges and lifting irons, the stone cutters remove the blocks from the rock and work on the surfaces of the grindstone.Neidenbach 1971 - 52 min (SW)
Recording / editing / comment: Gabriel Simons

I saw an article in the Early American Industries magazine years ago that showed 19th Century American axe blades being shaped and finished after forging on huge stone wheels turned by water power with water coolant. I suspect that sort of use is where these German wheels in 1971 will end up.

Larry

Incredible. What kind of stone is that?

The stone is sandstone. Close grained and relatively soft and homogeneous. I was impressed with how the stone cutters were able to work the sandstone using picks, chipping deep grooves or removing large amounts of the stone fairly quickly. Also interesting to note is none of the stonecutters wore any sort of safety glasses or prescription glasses, but they must have had excellent reflexes or knew how to chip the stone so none flew back at their faces/eyes.

The measuring and layout methods are ageless, using the square, rule, and dividers (or compass). With simple means the men shaped round grindstones with parallel faces and center bores concentric with the circumference. Accuracy is a relative thing, and while the stones might be within 1/8-1/4" in terms of roundness or parallel of the faces, the stones were wedged onto the arbors (or set on the arbor by pouring lead between the stone and the arbor and calking it with chisels). In use, the stone was dressed to roundness, and continually wore as it was used. We are spoiled by manmade grinding wheels, made to closer tolerances, and then we dress them to concentricity or shape to extremely close tolerances. We are also spoiled by grinding wheels made of abrasives of known properties, bonds, grit sizes, etc. A natural stone like these would cut rapidly, but wear rapidly as well. Not a stone for precision grinding.


The natural sandstone used for those grinding wheels was identified as good for the purpose 'way back when', and chances are that quarry was primarily for grindstones. The sandstone in that quarry was found to be ideal for grindstones, and the strata of the sandstone was thick enough to allow quarrying large/thick grindstones. There plenty more quarries for getting "dimension stone" for architectural or construction uses. I would think this quarry was held special for getting grindstones.


The natural sandstone grind-stones were made in a variety of diameters, as seen in the film. The larger ones were used in the manufacture of cutlery and edged tools (axes, adzes, and similar). Old German films of knife manufacture and similar show these natural sandstones in use, with the man doing the grinding often wearing a pair of wooden leg-guards which also allowed him to press hard on whatever was being ground, using his legs and thighs.

The film brings back a memory of a nuclear powerplant construction site I worked at in 1973-75. It was in Waterford, Connecticut, and was known as "Millstone Point". I worked during the construction of Unit 2. The story of the name was that there had been a quarry on the site where stone for millstones was quarried. Being a quarry site, it was situated on a sound rock strata, and ideal for siting a nuclear powerplant. Stone for grist mills are quarried from a harder stone than the sandstone in this film, and mill stones have a coarser surface with natural "burrs".

Here in Britain,in the Peak District,was quarried a coarse sharp sandstone for millstones called-Millstone Grit

Very interesting video, hard working artisans..and not one of them stopped working to BS on their smart phone, amazing.

Stuart

Smartphone !? Those guys would be lucky to have a hard-wired landline phone in their houses. I learned the machinist trade in large part from German immigrants. You did not sit when working. You did not stand still. You learned the work ethic if you did not have it already, or you were out the door and gone. You also learned thrift, and you learned to do a job right even if it seemed inconsequential or something that "did not matter". Details were everything, and whether you were deburring parts with a three-corner scraper ( 1960's, pre fancy de-burring tools), or driving screws to hold a cover plate, you made sure the job was done right or the old foreman would be on you, hollering and maybe giving you his elbow in your ribs. This was in the USA, not in Germany, but those guys had brought their skills, discipline and work ethic with them when they arrived in NYC. I was a kid, and they saw something in my to bring along, and they did. Tell a young person of today that the foreman or journeyman will be hollering at them if they do not "get it" on the third try, or that they have to be at their work station when working hours start (not going thru the clock 1 minute ahead of starting time), and that they can't text, take cell phone calls, or bring their fancy coffee onto the shop floor... and tell a young person they might just get a half-serious cuff in the shoulder or an elbow in the ribs and a yelling-at, and see where that gets you.

I was a kid of about 15 when I started working for German immigrant machinists, and I came from a household where the work ethic was summed up by my father: "You get in line, do what you're told, keep your nose clean, pay your dues and don't cut the line (try for special treatment or whine)". The first morning on the job in the shop, I had walked nearly 1 mile to the subway station in Brooklyn, ridden subways from Brooklyn to 42nd Street in Manhattan (Times Square) and changed for a train out to Long Island City, in the borough of Queens, where the machine shop was. Maybe 45 minute-1 hour on the subways, plus the walks to and from the stations at each end. I had left the house way early since we started work at 7 AM, so no breakfast. I remember when the catering truck arrived at 9 AM, and I was so happy to get a container of coffee and a buttered hard roll. The foreman rang bells and blew air whistles to signal starts and stops of work, lunch and breaks. I had brought a lunch, so was Ok in the department. At about 1:30, the foreman rang a gong, and all the machinists filed out of the shop for afternoon break. The foreman stopped me and handed me a "brown glass quart" of beer. He explained that in Germany, this was their custom (he and his cohorts had come to the USA in 1923 fleeing a runaway inflation and hard times in Germany). I was 15, handed a quart of beer, and bracing up against the brick wall of the machine shop with the foreman and the other machinists, felt like the biggest man around. I learned the basics of the machinist trade from those men, learned to work, and learned to speak a workingman's German in the bargain.

The men in the stone cutting youtube may as well have been relatives or neighbors to the men who emigrated to the USA and taught me the machinist trade. Quiet, strong sense of values and "place", methodical, hard working with infinite patience and eyes for detail would be a good way to sum them up. Whenever I pick up a file or three-corner scraper, I think of old Max and the machinists who took a 15 year old kid on for a summer job and taught him the machinist trade and so much more over the next few years when I could work part time and summers with them. The old foreman, when he was hollering at me about taking too long on a job, or similar, would call me
"herr Meister". Now, my buddy's father- a German immigrant woodworker- calls me "Herr Meister" as a term of respect when we raise a beer together. Now, also, I am starting a nephew in the machine shops, and will be working part time (so much for "retirement") alongside him at some points. Seeing the men in the quarry brought back a lot of memories of the oldtime immigrant machinists I worked with. Basic, solid people working at their trades having served some substantial apprenticeships, and having very solid values and principals.

Joe,

Cool your jets 'Herr Meister'..we're on the same page about the millennial's and their work ethics. My statement was purely tongue in cheek.

Stuart

The second of those grind stone mason films was very interesting, I turned on the auto translate subtitles and was able to make out that they mentioned growing a large mustache to help filter out the rock grit dust along with the occasional swig of schnapps to wash the throat clear. I had lunch with some friend on Friday and met a friend's German father in law: he turned out to be a chemical plant process engineer who implements lab processes on an industrial scale. A lot of the job is recovering and regenerating chemicals to improve efficiency.

If you have time on your hands, watch some of the other German Handwerk videos that will be in the sidebar on Youtube. There are ones about a shinglemaker, a maker of knife handles, several about smith work, etc. It's a rabbithole, but pretty interesting.