IN 1968, the year I arrived in Portland, Oregon, local stone fabrication was almost nonexistent. The industry was made up of less then six union marble setters, who installed precut stone slabs on buildings and mausoleums. 

These pre-sized stone panels came from familiar fabrication locations, such as Vermont Marble Co., Georgia Granite Co., Bybee Stone Co., Cold Spring Granite Co., Fletcher Granite Co., etc. I had already worked and trained at the world’s largest stone fabrication company, Cold Spring Granite, for seven years. I was surprised to be in a place were there was little knowledge of stone or stone fabrication. Information about these stone companies was collected from Sweets Catalog. All design offices had them. These companies provided technical information on their products for designers as needed.

At this point, I know many people would say there were a large number of rubble stone setters or stone masons and tile setters, quite different trades. Both worthy trades, but not cut stone people. The rubble stone workers trade required mainly strength and endurance. I have always felt that glass fabricators and installers were a lot closer to stone fabricators and installers than tile setters, with glass having low tensile strength, high compression strength and a need for accuracy in sizing. I always smile to myself when people tell me about that stone guy, who built the retaining wall in their backyard, who could hit the stone with his hammer and it would break it right were he hit it. What a stone man he was. Really?  President John Adams took great delight in stacking stones in his retirement. Stone fences built by Chinese labor dot the California foothills. An honorable trade, but not to be confused with dimension stone fabricators or installers. It has been a long time since the dimension stone cutters have been replaced by stone fabrication facilities, as mentioned above. Regional areas were left with stone stackers for the most part. See my blog “The Lost Trade of Stone Cutting.” If you are interested in various roles in the stone fabrication industry see my blog, “Why Blog.”

Before the kitchen counter revolution, there was little work for the local stone fabricator. That is a person I define who cuts and finishes dimension stone to a custom fit, from slabs or tiles. In Portland when I arrived, there was one stone shop employing five people and less then six stone setters, as stated above. Today I would guess there may be between three and five hundred people employed in the stone business in Portland one way or the other.

At Blazing Granite in 1968, Art Lear ran a primitive diamond saw, powered forward and back, and up and down only. Oddly the saws forward and back motion was a water-driven hydraulic system. There was a quite modern Tysaman saw there as well, never used, because Art said it wouldn’t cut. I fixed it many years later when I learned about concentric bearings. He slid the stone by hand on a steel saw bed to line up each cut to the solitary blade path. He got to a point where he could slide the stone to fractions of an inch to where he wanted them. The first saw I had was even more primitive when I started Conrad Stone twenty years later. Art always had at least ten bottles of good whiskey given to him at holiday season in his four-by-four office with a phone. He went to the Elks Club every night before going home. Bless his heart.

Slab refinishing was done by Howard Coleman, a granite quarryman from Medica Lake, Washington, on a part-time basis. He also drove a truck and did other jobs there. See “Howard, the One Hundred and Forty Pound Muscle Man.” Again, surfacing marble slabs was done with carborundum bricks, of different degrees from 40 grit to 400 grit, then buffed with a buffing pad made right there of cut-up rope segments, surrounded with a metal strap.

Buffing was done with tin or aluminum oxide with a dose of oxalic acid. Granite polishing could not be done with the tools we had then. Later, a full-time surface polisher was added, a cigar-smoking fine fellow fleeing from Kansas City, where he was paid on the basis of square feet of stone he polished every day. He made a fine oyster stew and became a friend. I wonder if Leroy is still alive.

I learned from a Seattle marble man who never even had a polish machine. His finished work was not very good, but in the “good old days” people accepted what they got, as Art said after each job, “Lucky to get it.”

Any finishing was done by Cal Michelson. This was mainly polishing flat edges on marble, and filling travertine with colored cement. The edges, be it a bath vanity, fireplace hearth, legs or header, was accomplished by mounting the stone on edge and belt sanding it from 80 grit to 400 grit with sanding belts, then dipping a rolled-up, burlap cloth in a mixture of oxalic acid and sulfur dampening the hard rag by dipping in water, and rubbing the edge until

it took a shine. Granite edges were finished with air-powered carborundum wheels, 24 grit, 220 grit, and 400 grit, then buffed with a hard pad and tin oxide, the same way I finished granite memorials in afternoons while I attended college, years later.

I measured and delivered the fabricated stone to the job site, all jobs installed by a union marble setter and his helper. Rarely were they happy with the sizing or the job. On average the union marble setter, a branch of the bricklayers union, was paid about three times what a stone fabricator received. Consequently, management was always concerned that he wasted no time. If they complained that something about the sizing or fabrication cost them to work longer, the pressure was turned up on me. Average cost of a 15-square-foot fireplace was $450. Four-hundred and fifty dollars in 1968 would be equal to about $1,800 now. Today, that same fireplace would cost $1,500.

So, you see, the whole stone fabrication industry in Portland consisted of Art, Howard (part-time), Cal, me, and a marble setter and his helper in 1968, and it never changed much, other then different names, till around 1990. I must add there was one other fellow, Gordon Nelson, who to the best of my knowledge worked by himself. They say he installed by day, fabricated by night. He would go to LA, buy an old truck, load it with marble in one of the three stone yards there, and drive back to Portland. What a business. Our inventory came to Portland by ship with crated slabs, handled by expensive stevedores.

I was sent to the Port of Portland about twice a year and had to hire three stevedores, one to drive the forklift, one to sling cables, and one to hold the clipboard and keep time. I drove the old flatbed (as I have described in my blog “Howard, the One Hundred and Forty Pound Muscle Man”), and tied the tall thin crates down with chains, then made my way back to Beaverton, worrying all the way should they fall. Mr. Macy and the shop wondered why it took so long, knowing the stevedores worked by the hour. The normal inventory we kept was six slabs of Italian Cremo, six Negro Marquina, six Norwegian Rose, six Carrara, six Travertine, and maybe six Rose Aurora. I may have left a few out, but that’s pretty much the choices Portland marble buyers had to choose from. I don’t remember one customer who didn’t have a designer helping her choose a stone. What a business it was. As my friend

Bob Scull says, “We did every job twice and still made money.” If anyone needed any custom stonework done in Portland, it was done by us four or five guys working for not much more then minimum wage. As I have often heard said when you asked for a raise, the usual answer was, “Try Seattle, they might be hiring.”

But for the most part Mr. Macy, though not a Medici, was a good man to work for. I still think highly of him, now in his 90s, and still playing golf.

The reader might wonder how could such a business exist with so little demand. It couldn’t. Local stone fabrication was a very minor part of the business. Historically, the business always did a good memorial business, lettering prefabricated tombstones, which I worked in later when I went to college. But the big business was installing prefabricated mausoleums throughout the northwest and as stated, installing prefabricated stone slabs on buildings; all this work was done only by union marble setters who knew little about fabrication, they just installed. That was an apprenticeship I took up years later after college.

I think if you made a graph of local stone fabrication, it would pretty much bump along the bottom with a little improvement after 1975, but for the most part, it would just be a tiny industry employing fewer than 10 people in Oregon up until 1990. (A future story will discuss how I survived as a stone fabricator from 1975 till 1990, when the local stone fabrication industry exploded because of kitchen counters.)

The 1968 Stone Product Line Stone Floors

Stone floors and slate floors were installed in what we called dry pac. Dry pac was a 3-1 sand/cement mixture, chopped by hand hoe, adding just enough water so that you could make a ball of it in your hand, but still a fluffy texture, which allowed the stone to be pounded into the correct location (see diagram 1). On wood floors, tar paper and wire mesh were first put down, pure cement was broadcast and drywall shoved down, on average about a one inch thickness. The stone was then fitted to the correct location, lifted back out, back painted with water and pure cement, then more pure cement was broadcast to make a sticky surface (see diagram 2). The dry pac was then sprinkled with water so the cement would set hard, and the stone was replaced to it in the correct position.

This may sound quite simple to many, however, remember dimension stone was expected to be installed with tight joints; the stone did not have rounded edges to conceal differences in height. The object was to have one flat plane on the surface no matter what was happening on the sub floor (see diagram 3). The difference between setting tile with rounded edges and joints, which allow you to just fallow the sub floor, and setting a flat stone floor should now be apparent to the reader. Not many marble setters mastered the skill to install a great floor. See my blog “Some Bits of Advice Given to Me by Stone People.”

Ceiling Stones or Soffits

I have shown how walls and floors were installed but stone also was sometimes put on the ceiling. This was a bit trickier. Wire was twisted with a drill to turn it into a rod. Two holes were drilled about three inches apart. Copper wire was formed, as shown with pliers (see diagram 4). After placing the wire in the holes, it was twisted to make it tight. A hole was put in the sheetrock and 20 minute casting plaster was used to secure stone to the ceiling.

It’s a good idea to have holes near the joists for strength. It amazed me that it worked.

Joseph Conrad has fifty years experience working in the stone fabrication industry. He is the founder of Conrad Stonecutter in Portland, Oregon (www.conradstonecutter.com) and a 15-year member of Northwest Stone Sculptors Association, www.nwssa.org.