PARK AND CEMETERY. 
27b 
♦ 
COMPRESSED AIR FOR PARK AND CEMETERY USE 
The use of compressed air is becoming 
more and more general in many fields. Its 
adaption to use in parks and cemeteries 
may be considered one of the latest appli- 
cations. but already many of the larger 
cemeteries and parks have found use for 
such machines. 
The ordinary city or government park 
and even cemeteries have to contend with 
rock formation from time to time. Some- 
times in the building of a road blasting 
must be done. At other times field stones 
lying exposed must be split or blasted 
apart. At still other times there are men- 
acing rocks or ridges which may be over- 
hanging paths. These must be removed. 
The old way of doing this was to drill 
them with hand drills, putting two men to 
work. In most of these cases it is not 
possible to drill more than from ten to 
fifteen feet of holes per day. With an air 
drill operated from one of the new port- 
able machines the drilling can be done by 
one man at a rate of from 125 to 200 feet 
of holes per day. 
Some cemetery companies have also 
adopted the power method. The Maple 
Grove Cemetery, of Brooklyn, N. Y., was 
forced to get such an outfit to take care 
of the many rocks which they encountered. 
If a large rock w r as encountered in the 
digging of a grave, then instead of dig- 
ging a large, ragged hole to remove the 
stone, it is only necessary to drill several 
holes into it and split the objectionable part 
away. 
The same equipment with a different 
drill is used for drilling into tree stumps 
preparatory for blasting. 
In the cemetery the same machine is put 
to splendid use during the winter months 
for breaking away top soil which is frozen. 
With a fairly long drill bit the operator 
drills into the frozen ground and after the 
drill is into the ground about eight or ten 
inches he uses the drill and tool as he 
would a crowbar. This is very effective. 
This compressed air machine has also 
been put to work for ramming or tamping 
down the loose ground after a burial. This 
prevents the settling a short time after the 
grave has been fixed up. 
Perhaps the most profitable use for the 
outfit in the cemetery is in lettering or re- 
pairing monuments in the cemetery. As 
every reader knows, there are many let- 
ters on monuments which cannot be cut as 
well by hand as they can by a pneumatic 
tool. The monument dealers who are up 
to date have equipped their shops with 
compressed air outfits and the manufac- 
turers of the machine illustrated here have 
close to seven hundred machines used for 
lettering and carving purposes. So neces- 
sary are pneumatic tools to the making of 
a perfect job that in a large number of 
cases the monument dealer will go to the 
trouble and expense of taking a heavy 
team and several men and will take part of 
the stone away from the cemetery and re- 
move it to his shop, where he can do the 
work properly. This last-mentioned oper- 
ation, of course, is more or less injurious 
to law'ns. 
Now, if this same operation were done 
on the monument in the cemetery by means 
of a portable pneumatic plant, it would 
save this damage. It would do away with 
the view of the unsightly base for a period 
of many days. It would mean that the job 
would be done well and done speedily. 
If our readers will go to any of the 
nearby granite shops and ask the workmen 
as to the desirability of machine-cut letters 
they will all answer that they are much 
better than hand-cut letters. They will all 
admit that if they had a choice they would 
select the pneumatic tool method for cut- 
ting letters in the cemetery, rather than 
move the stone or attempt to cut them by 
hand. 
The trouble is that there are perhaps 
several dozen monument dealers represent- 
ed by the work in the average cemetery. 
They cannot all afford to take their ma- 
chines to the cemetery and in a good many 
cases they cannot afford to get a machine 
because they do not have enough work of 
this character to do. 
It is to help these various monument 
dealers get the work out better that it will 
become necessary to have a pneumatic ma- 
chine in the larger and better equipped 
cemeteries. The basis on which the mon- 
ument dealer will be able to get the ma- 
chine depends upon local conditions. Owing 
to the fact that the ordinary carving or 
lettering job can be done in one-half to 
one-third of the time taken by hand, it has 
been found that $5 for an eight-hour day is 
a reasonable charge. 
To enable the cemetery to have work of 
this character done as speedily as possible, 
larger cemeteries might easily find it profit- 
able to own a portable pneumatic plant and 
rent it to monument dealers for cemetery 
lettering and at the same time have it on 
hand for any of the various cemetery uses 
enumerated above. The machine could thus 
soon be made to pay for itself, the basis of 
charges for the rental of the machine de- 
pending upon local conditions. 
The manufacturers of the portable out- 
fit illustrated here, Messrs. Chris D. 
Schramm & Son, York avenue and Fourth 
street, Philadelphia, have an interesting 
proposition of this character that they will 
be glad to explain. This particular outfit, 
which has so many uses in and about a 
cemetery, has been on the market for some 
years. Each machine is put out on free 
trial with the regular guarantee of one 
year. Tools and equipment will be loaned 
until the machine has proven its worth. 
PORTABLE COMPRESSED AIR PLANT DRILLING ROCK IN COMPLETING INSCRIPTION ON MONUMENT IN CEMETERY 
PALISADES PARK, OPPOSITE NEW YORK CITY. WITH PORTABLE COMPRESSED AIR PLANT. 
