sheldon slate, granville, new york

while working on the designs for the custom kitchen we started this week, our client and i went to visit a local slate fabricator, sheldon slate, in middle granville, new york. it's about 15 miles up the metawee valley through the corn and over the border ... who knew?

what a place !!! that's a 90" diamond saw blade spinning at about, oh, i don't know, 2000 rpm?, slicing through about a 3' x 4' block of slate, 3/4 of an inch at a time, cutting both ways .... click the photos to enlarge them ..

a view from the side ... we're sawing very unusual red slate today ... twice as hard, twice as much breakage, twice as much waste, twice as expensive ...

but oh my, maybe twice as beautiful ... these are pretty big pieces, like 66" x 57", and the rain made them just glow ...

you gotta love the scale of these tools. i think it was about 10' between the uprights on this bandsaw.  our tour guide, gary, told us sometimes the blocks are so heavy they can't pick them up off the huge dump trucks they come in on from the quarry and they just back the truck into the mill, cut em in half right on the truck, then drive it back out and unload ...

the view out the back door there looks over part of the quarry and south to haystack and home ...

and out the other door, the acres of inventory

including a little roof slate, like maybe 500 square or so ..

loved it, and i didn't have my camera for the first half of the tour where we visited the honing/planing/milling section ... more big tools ...
we were there to look at the available colors and give them a heads up that we would need some pretty big counters ... the one on the right will require a piece about 6' wide and 7' long with some angles, sink and faucet holes and a custom made 42 x 21 x 12" deep matching slate sink. the one on the left, about 50" x 100" ... no problem ... just bring your checkbook ... more on the kitchen soon ...
we're underway, site check today ....