Page 22 - Demo

22|August 2022 Granite
hoisting the blocks into place using stainless steel all-thread pins set in a high strength Hilti epoxy and shackles. In addition to the stain- less-steel pins functioning to lift the blocks, the same pins became the dowels between the stones.
There were no staging areas to hold the stone, according to Robert Barnes, III, president and CEO of Dee Brown, Inc., which meant stone shipments were carefully orchestrated to allow for elements to be picked from the truck and directly placed into position upon arrival, since it also took a fair amount of time to unload them.
It took a tremendous amount of planning and scheduling between Coldspring and Dee Brown to coordinate deliveries since it also took a couple of days for the stone to arrive from Coldspring’s head- quarters in Minnesota.
Setting had to be done by crane and the heaviest stone was roughly 40,000 pounds.
“Logistics was probably the most challenging part of this project,” admits Barnes, who noted there were several things that needed to be addressed throughout the
slippery rock gAzette
process. “There was the existing landscape and there was the loca- tion of the project with the roads. With the crane and pieces that big, you have to have multiple lifting locations to be able to spread the load evenly so that the crane oper- ator can bring that thing down as level as humanly possible.”
Maneuvering and setting such large and heavy stones in their place without a crane would have been impossible. “I think if you hit the piece with a truck, you couldn’t move the stone,” he adds.
Goldberg was onsite every day, often as early as 6:30 a.m. until mid-afternoon, working alongside the experienced setting crew.
“You epoxy these pins in at the end of the day and by the morning, they are hardened. These threaded, stainless steel pins are the lifting device for the blocks.
Please turn to page 24
After quarrying, the blocks were cut and prepared for a mock-up review by Goldberg at the Coldspring facility. Once accepted, the fabrication pro- ceeded with typical, high-qual- ity ColdspriPnhgotaottbeynBtriaodnJ.tGooldebe-rg tail.
Portals
Continued from page 18
According to Coldspring, over 8,250 cubic feet of Kenoran Sage granite in natural and thermal fin- ishes were used to create the two entry portals, standing at 16 feet tall and 20 feet tall respectively. The largest blocks measured 4 x 4 x 14 feet.
“They are pretty big stones,” Goldberg admits. “Big stones to quarry, big stones to handle, cer- tainly big stones to set.”
In fact, it would take about 30 truckloads to transport the mate- rial from Canada to Coldspring in Minnesota, which then needed to be fabricated.
“They had to be fabricated based on the pieces at the bottom first, moving on to the top because you obviously have to set the pieces on the bottom first and then stack as you go up,” Goldberg notes, and that’s how they were shipped. Because of the extreme size and weight, some trucks could only handle one block while some had two. “There’s only so much the trucks can withstand and there are road weight limits,” he adds.
The next challenge was with the fabrication, and this is where Goldberg says Coldspring excels. He finds that there aren’t a lot of companies with their vast experi- ence and skills to do this kind of work.
One thing Goldberg was inspired by was the drill marks that occur during the quarrying process. He thought they could make for a visually intriguing texture and would allow him to show how the stone
Photo by Brad J. Goldberg
were cut and prepared for a mock-up review by Goldberg at the Coldspring facility. Once accepted, the fabrication pro- ceeded with typical, high-quality Coldspring attention to detail.
During the fabrication process, the site was also being prepared for the installation.
Installing Sylvan Portals
Dee Brown Inc., a Richardson, Texas-based company Goldberg has used in the past to install proj- ects, was tasked to offload the blocks at the site with three masons and a 160-ton crane to help set the pieces into place within a tolerance of 1/8 of an inch. Ken Bownds, the stone structural engineer with Curtainwall Design Consulting (CDC), devised a system of
was the by-product of the quarry.
“They’re on the cutting edge of this kind of mixture of technology and hand working and also just old-fashioned techniques,” says Goldberg. “It’s really interest- ing and it’s really exciting. I chal- lenged them by bringing a project to them like this and they’re always up for the challenge.”
Goldberg was inspired to use large blocks so the extraction pro- cess of the granite in the quarry could really come through. Goldberg opted to use a thermal texture on the inside of the leaf shapes and along the edges. This high temperature flame process makes these areas of the pieces look very refined in contrast to the drill marks and rough texture on the faces of the quarry blocks.
After quarrying, the blocks
According to Coldspring, over 8,250 cubic feet of Kenoran Sage granite in natural and thermal fin- ishes were used to create the two entry portals, standing at 16 feet tall and 20 feet tall respectively. The largest blocks measured 4 x 4 x 14 feet. Photo by Brad J. Goldberg
Setting had to be done by crane, and the heaviest stone was roughly 40,000 pounds. Photo by Dee Brown