A study of existing practices of block splitting in dimensional stone quarrying

摘要

Any stone cut and shaped into a specific size is called dimensional stone. In the commercial parlance the term granite is loosely applied to any dimensional stones ranging from true granites to gabbros, syenites, dolerites, migmatites etc. Even today, most of the granite quarries in our country depend on primitive technology without any scientific knowledge leading to poor production and recovery. The scientific investigations are limited only to demarcate the occurrences of granite deposit as lithological units and did not cover the parameters for their commercial exploitation. The extraction of dimensional stone warrants an entirely different type of exploitation methods. Hence there is an urgent need to study the scientific and technical aspects of exploitation of granites in proper perspective to ensure better recovery and conservation. This paper reviews, in the light the number of techniques adopted in India to extract the granite blocks and their merits and demerits in order to get good recovery from insitu.