One of the great things about living in an island community is the length and breadth a group of friends will go to for a little diversion. Boat launchings, ice boating adventures, timber frame raisings, wind and tidal power generation, cutting and moving monolithic blocks of stone – lofty ideas hatched out around kitchen tables and trips back and forth across the bay – and ones that bring out the ingenuity and Tom Sawyer enthusiasm among island neighbors. The revitalization, after a 40-year dormancy, of the last productive granite quarry on Vinalhaven represents the serendipitous coming together of a rare piece of machinery and a group of “mature” gentlemen dubbing themselves The Four Fossils.
What began as a wild idea to build a thirty-foot stone tower on the island, became a sort of obsession for Fossil Fred Granger. Granger, affectionately known as “Fred Flintstone,” owns and operates heavy equipment, boom trucks and dump trucks, and is undaunted when it comes to shoving around several-ton chunks of stone.
In 2005 he was contacted about a 1955-built Carborundum wire saw for sale from the Lincoln Granite Company of Quincy, Massachusetts. With the help of a friend and fellow heavy equipment operator, Randy Farnum, Granger purchased the saw, not exactly in showroom condition, with the hopes of cutting the eighteen-foot stone steps needed for his tower. For the next few years it lay on its side in pieces in Farnum’s front yard, an ornament in “Randy’s Sculpture Garden.”
Research and friends in the field eventually brought forth Roger Belisle, the man capable of breathing new life into Granger’s saw. Owner of a granite quarry in Hooksett, New Hampshire, Belisle, now in his 60s, worked in his grandfather’s quarry at the age of ten and began working straight out of high school in a Swenson-owned quarry in Concord. According to Granger, Belisle is infamous as an expert on granite and a remarkably generous man with his time and knowledge. The first order of business was to convert the 50-foot cutting cable to a diamond wire, a rubber coated cable impregnated with industrial diamond dust. The diamond wire is quieter, safer, and makes a more precision cut, using only water to lubricate, cool the cut and remove debris. For Belisle, rebuilding a stone cutting saw in a Swenson quarry on Vinalhaven brought his career full circle, having cut some of the last stones quarried from this site in the 1950s. On May 17th he was on hand to witness the first new stone being cut flawlessly. According to Fossil member Wes Reed, “It was obvious that he had gotten this saw working better than his own. The blade is capable of running at fifty-two miles per hour. Our first day of operation Roger calculated it with calibration devices at 51.94… it was neat to see him leave with a twinkle in his eye.”
The other three members of the newly formed corporation have varying, yet similar, interests in the project, namely a fond affection for the island’s indigenous stone. Reed, a real estate agent, also holds a Masters degree in Fine Arts and Sculpture. Says Reed, “This machine is like a giant bandsaw for cutting stone, I’m not aware that there has ever been a granite saw here. For me, being able to go up and cut out a piece of granite for sculpting is an answer to a dream. Prior to this I was living on an island made out of granite, with a rich history of carving, with no way to get a piece of stone.” Hugh Martin, retired from a career in insurance, also fell in love with working stone after enrolling in a sculpture class two years ago. Martin admits, “It is ‘boys with toys,’ no question. With the right equipment, cutting the stone is very easy, sculpting it is hard.” Fourth member Ted Johanson joined on for the vicarious pleasure of the project and with a vision of once again utilizing the island’s historic resource. Retired founder and president of a boot manufacturing firm in Lewiston, Maine, Johanson adds, “I was interested from an engineering point of view… bringing back that old saw and bringing back some history.”
Working alongside the four partners are an assortment of merry men and women and, as Johanson humorously describes, “the biggest scroungers on the island.” The quarry site was initially overgrown and unrecognizable. Many volunteers aided over the fall and spring clearing the land and exposing the quarry pond that provides the water needs. Materials were ‘recycled’ from the demolition of the town’s fish plant; spruce blowdowns were milled for beams and braces. A former boiler tank uncovered in the woods was welded up by the local boatyard and stood on end as a gravity-fed holding tank. Three-phase power was run to the site and buried underground, a cement slab poured, a railway track and turntable constructed to shape and cut the stone. Many blocks at the site weigh as much as 16,000 pounds and had been left stacked on top of each other from back in the days of hydraulic booms and winches. A crane used in delivering a modular home to the island was hired to place all of the stones on the ground where they will be hand split to a workable size.
The Fossils are leasing the site from present owners Bill Alcorn and Del Webster who purchased the property originally as a test site for wind power generation. Says Alcorn, “The quarry was an added dividend.” Alcorn estimates that there are between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic feet of granite blocks standing on the site. The corporation intends to fabricate doorsteps, landscaping stone and other custom stonework for private use on the island. When asked if the Fossils expected to recoup their investments, Martin replied, “Financially, maybe, maybe not. We all went into the agreement prepared not to and purely for the love of the task. Will we emotionally recoup? Definitely ‘yes.'”