George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation

Don't try this at home! Early in 2004, some of our Aquia sandstone boulders were sent to a stone yard in North Carolina where they were turned into new steps for the West entrance of Historic Kenmore. Cutting these boulders, some of which weighed as much as 39 tons, was no child's play.

18 ton sandstone boulder is positioned by a workman

Shown at left, a workman jockeys one of the smaller, 18 ton boulders into place on the cutting floor. You can see that this boulder has already had one cut, to square off one side.

Bandsaw cutting stone

The firm uses a large, water-cooled bandsaw to cut the stone into slabs, as shown at right.

Table saw cutting stone slab

With the boulders squared and cut into more manageable slabs, blocks that will eventually be fashioned into steps can be cut using large, powerful circular saws.

A workman fashions the steps with hand tools

After several more machine-based shaping processes, the final details of the steps are completed by hand carving with a variety of tools.

The finished step

Once the carving is finished, the step is smoothed and the work is complete at last. As soon as all the needed slabs have been cut and steps fashioned, they will be on their way back to Kenmore for installation.

Video footage of the work on the boulders is available below. Note - these are LARGE files! The videos will play more smoothly if you download them to your own hard drive first. To download, RIGHT click on the file name and select "Save As ..." from the menu.

Video 1 - bandsaw cutting a boulder (4.87 MB)
Video 2 - hand shaping of the steps (4.68 MB)