Before an after pictures.

[tom black]

My wife an I are deep into genealogy an on the weekends we go around to the local cemeteries and clean and reset tombstones-if they aren't too big. We've done this for several years now and I have no idea how many we have worked on. So many of these people have no one left or anyone who cares to tend their graves. At the end of the day we get a great deal of pleasure out of doing this. The tombstone in the two lower pictures are of my wife's great grandparents. It was really beginning to list and we reset it. The neat thing about this little job was three generations of their descendants helped in fixing it. I think those old folks would appreciate that.
Tom Black

 

[Merle1948]

very kind of you! :D

 

[hittman]

Great work! God bless you for doing that!

 

[Bear Paw Jack]

That is a real work of love, doing that. I'm sure the family would appreciate knowing that.

 

[caryc]

Good on you and very interesting. Can I ask how you clean those stones? I guess one could use a wire brush if you didn't get carried away and screw up the lettering. Maybe a brass brush? Or does some kind of chemical cleaner suffice?

 

[Xsales]

Well Done

Very deserving of the people who came before us and in fact has caused US to be here

 

[CLAYPOOL]

WELL DONE

 

[coach]

Good job. You really put some heart into the work.

 

[Tom W]

When I first moved to Alabama I worked with a monument company. Part of what we did was to straighten and clean monuments. For marble we diluted some muriatic acid in water, then thoroughly wet the monument with water. We ALWAYS used a stiff brush
with fiber bristles, as a wire brush would break off bristles and then the would rust, making the problem worse. It was imperative to keep the marble wet, and when we were finished scrubbing it we'd thoroughly rinse it off, if not the acid would eat the marble and cause it to turn yellow.
For granite we used a granite cleaner that we bought from a supplier in Elberton Georgia. We didn't have to wet it first, just give it a good scrubbing and a thorough rinse afterwards.
Leveling the stones was a bit more tricky. We mixed cement with sand and used pry bars that were sheathed if the base was polished, and 2x4's to lift the stone. Pack the concrete mix in under the stone and put a level on it to be sure it wasn't leaning. We used a 2x4 to tap on with the pry bar to level it. I did this for several years, going from Dothan to Montgomery Alabama, Plains Georgia to some places I still never heard of.

 

[pete44ru]

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You are doing God's work - THANK YOU !


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