Dartmoor - Merrivale Quarry & Meldon Quarry Railway

[theoss]

We used to use an Anderson-Grice Pedlistle saw with a 36" blade, 2 Diavro frame saws with 63" blades, a Van Voorden Frame saw with a 118" blade and a BM frame saw which was just a huge stone cutting hacksaw and a couple of smaller cross cut saws with 24" blades

Your saw is bigger than my saw...

What sort of stuff they turning out at your place? I had never heard of 'Grice' until that job, and came away thinking surely there is only one.

These were carbon blocks for furnaces and similar rubbish things, the plant itself was huge, but run down and only kept open for this saw, and the perfectly level assembly floor. The blocks were trundled through a door on a rail mounted trolley, and the mad italian would operate the machine. I had never seen a machine like it before, or since, and I feared the worse when they restarted it after we had been waving oxy torches around to replace the traverse bush- a job requiring brute force and precision alignment at the same time. They wanted it running again urgently so it was the only time I worked a week contracting and wasn't expected to do anything since they wanted us on standby for when the new part came back from the machinists. Infact, oli drum based bonfires began cropping up all over the place directly resultant of my boredom.And when the part arrived it was chaos, since the usual proper, coded, welder was om holiday it might have been I wading with the welding rods- little wonder the machine has gone now, it's probably in orbit somewhere. Happier times- 'flow' springs to mind.

And it was, looking at pictures, actually an 84" Grice. Scary.

 

[jonney]

Your saw is bigger than my saw...

What sort of stuff they turning out at your place? I had never heard of 'Grice' until that job, and came away thinking surely there is only one.

These were carbon blocks for furnaces and similar rubbish things, the plant itself was huge, but run down and only kept open for this saw, and the perfectly level assembly floor. The blocks were trundled through a door on a rail mounted trolley, and the mad italian would operate the machine. I had never seen a machine like it before, or since, and I feared the worse when they restarted it after we had been waving oxy torches around to replace the traverse bush- a job requiring brute force and precision alignment at the same time. They wanted it running again urgently so it was the only time I worked a week contracting and wasn't expected to do anything since they wanted us on standby for when the new part came back from the machinists. Infact, oli drum based bonfires began cropping up all over the place directly resultant of my boredom.And when the part arrived it was chaos, since the usual proper, coded, welder was om holiday it might have been I wading with the welding rods- little wonder the machine has gone now, it's probably in orbit somewhere. Happier times- 'flow' springs to mind.

And it was, looking at pictures, actually an 84" Grice. Scary.

Sadly our place is no more (recession etc.) but we used to quarry sandstone and turn it into all types of building stone. Everything from lintles to window cills, quoins to coping and the waste we turned into rockery stone. The block of quarried stone (usually about 4-5 tonne) was slabbed up on the BM Frame saw then put on the circular saws to cut them up to the required sizes. We supplied stone all over the country and worked on some big jobs over the years.

 

[waynezbitz1]

theoss long time no see fella! how ya doing?

going back to the quary! is this the quarry just up from prince town? if so i visited this several years ago whilst staying at my parents caravan in peter tavy. if my memory serves me correctly there used to be a large crane or gantry over hanging the quarry itself and the building had dozens of various size grinding wheels in them.
i also recal going into a small store shed and finding a dead sheep in there rotting away and it stank to high heaven.
ive not been down that way since about 2004 but im hoping to go down this year for a weekend and chack this and a coupld of places out again and also take a camera with me this time lol

 

[theoss]

theoss long time no see fella! how ya doing?

Hello.

Still around with my wavering zest of life....

Did you make Dorset last year? I just had two days at Wiscombe cider, then off. It's either back to normal this year, or I might not be there at all depending whether I get any festival work this year.