Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another fascinating episode of MBNA's Monument Matters, a podcast produced by the Monument Builders of North America. For all things monumental.
MBNA is a 119-year-old association whose mission is to define and promote memorialization in a viable, innovative and diversified way for its members and to enhance awareness of memorialization by the general public and the entire remembrance industry.
In that spirit of promoting memorialization, the MB&A marketing committee is providing these podcasts as an extension of our monthly magazine, MB News.
Each podcast episode features a discussion related to a magazine theme, Monument Matters Podcast. Invite everyone to listen and share.
You'll find all of the episodes of our first season on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. I'm your host, Mike John Cmaica from the Johns Carabelli Company Cimarano Monuments and Flowers in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm also a past president of the Monument Builders of North America.
Please join me in welcoming today's guests. First, from Granite City Tool in Barrie, Vermont, we have. We have Jerry Mascola. Morning, Jerry.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Good morning.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Also with us is retired conservator Tom Podnar, formerly of McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory in Oberlin, Ohio. Hi, Tom.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Good morning, Jerry. Good morning, Mike.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Good morning.
Jerry is president of Granite City Tool of Vermont and President Elect of the Monument Builders of North America's Supplier Bronze Division.
He has spent decades exploring memorial materials and methods. In this episode, he shares insights from his article in the July issue of MB News on white bronze monuments, also known as zinc memorials.
Tom Podnar, retired as a senior conservator at McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory.
Tom is a leading expert in the care and restoration of zinc monuments.
Known for his precise techniques and dedication to ethical conservation, Tom joins the conversation to discuss the challenges and rewards of restoring white bronze memorials. Welcome, gentlemen. Thanks for joining us today.
So, Jerry, your article calls white bronze America's ingenuity at its best. What's the history of zinc monuments and why do you think these monuments still fascinate people today?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Well, one of the things is that a lot of individuals were doing monuments and statues, memorial type deal out of bronze.
And bronze became very expensive, especially the copper. And that happened around, you know, 1865 to 1870.
And one of the things is that individuals started looking at other ways to use some type of metal material.
And the product that was made was zinc, showing that it was inexpensive, it was easy to work with, it had a low melting point and it was durable. And around 1870, they started putting together the monuments and the bronze or the zinc material to start making statues and memorials and everything Else, and it kind of caught on, but it was one of those things where it lasted about 40 years or so.
And that was from 1870 to roughly 1917, when the Bronze Company, Memorial Company and everybody that was in there started doing munitions for World War I.
So some of the history that was there.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Now, Tom White bronze was marketed as durable and cost effective. How does it hold up compared to other materials from a conservation perspective?
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Well, it has some very good qualities.
Like, we can see there's monuments from over 100 years ago that are still intact, although they may have slightly changed over time because the metal is heavy.
It also has a tendency to do what we call creep from the weight. So over the years, a monument that's taller, big can start to settle and warp and change a little bit just because the weight of the upper part on the lower part. The other thing about white bronze and the white bronze type memorials that we see in cemeteries as markers, those are very, very stable because they don't have much weight. They just have maybe three or four feet tall, something like that. But they get hit by lawnmowers. And the problem with the cast zinc, it's about a quarter of an inch thick, and it's very brittle. If it gets hit by a lawnmower, it's going to crack and break.
If tree limb falls on it, it's going to break and fall to the ground in big pieces.
And that's where I come along and put it back to Catherine.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Very good.
Kind of like Humpty Dumpty, I guess. Right?
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Kind of like Humpty Dumpty. And as. As Jerry said, 1860s is when this sort of begins, really hits the prime in the 1880s, because the north, after the Civil War had all the manufacturing capability that the south didn't have. But people wanted monuments to commemorate the Civil War.
And so as Jerry said, they start out with bronze.
A less expensive alternative was zinc. They still had the sand casting capabilities, which is how they cast these pieces in sand, just like they would with bronze. But they did it with zinc, as Jerry said, it melts at a very low temperature, about 700 degrees, 750 degrees. And it's easy to work with. And if you break something and it doesn't come out right, you just melt it down again and make it again.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: So. So by comparison, what is the melting point for bronze?
[00:06:25] Speaker C: We poured at 12 to 1400 degrees, depending on the thickness of the casting.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: So considerably higher.
[00:06:33] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: So, Jerry, how can someone spot a zinc monument in a cemetery? And how does the story of the monumental Bronze Company reflect the larger trends in memorialization in America?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Well, one of the things is that when you go into the cemetery, you look at different types of granite, marble, anything that they were using during that time frame. And as you start looking at the area, you'll notice almost like these monuments that look like they have been carved and everything else, but they have like a bluish gray U to it because of the way it weathers in the zinc comes in and stuff like that. It makes it very, you know, rust resistant.
Zinc has some of the durable qualities that it doesn't rust, it doesn't collect lichen and all the other things on there. And one of the things that once you kind of like catch a look at it and you start observing it, you can easily scan the landscape and stuff like that and start picking them out because they're very or ornamental because the way zinc was easily melted. And they had a lot. Matter of fact, the catalog that they had from The Monument Bronze Company had like over 500 different ways that you can do it. And they would build it from there and they would show people what was going on.
So you can easily tell. And then once you start getting closer, you can notice it that it's different from bronze because bronze has like a greenish tinge to it. Where this has like a bluish gray and then it's hollow because that's how they were manufactured. They would be put together on that area.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: So I understand that the, the bluish gray tint was not how the zinc was came out of the casting. There was a special top secret formula supplied to to the zinc to, to give it that, let's call it patina.
Can either one of you comment about what that process was like? What did they use to achieve that coloring?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Certainly, go ahead.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Well, what we see in the outdoor environment is something that might look like this and that this is in a cemetery. But it's a really tall monument.
And as Jerry said, it kind of looks kind of bluish gray.
And of course we're seeing something that's been outdoors for 100 years and it's changed its color over time. But when it was new, when it was made, it was bright, shiny metal. And they had lots of guys working in the shop putting these things together.
And I've taken a, an illustration from Carol Grissom's book and you see this fella here standing there. It's kind of hard to see what he's doing, but you can see there's a square opening that's the underside of the monument. And he's got a stick in his right hand up inside the monument. And in his left hand, he's got a ladle of molten zinc. That he's pouring into the corner of the inside of that form.
And that's how they bonded the pieces together.
So they would have four cast pieces, one for each side. And they bond them together in the corners like that.
So in the old days, they're working with. Everything looks brand new. And after they finished casting it.
This is the secret, secret sauce. Let's see if I can put it there.
That's the secret sauce. What you see the fella doing there is sandblasting. That's got a hose and a cloud coming out of it against the monument.
And that is the same way that we finish when we work on them. Because we have to do welding, reforming, casting new pieces. And everything's a different color of metal. It looks like the old aged bluish gray. And some of it looks bright new silver. So at the end, we have to sandblast the whole monument from top to bottom to even it out.
Once it goes outside, it immediately begins to change back to its bluish gray color.
And I'll put up one more, because it gives you idea.
Jerry mentioned in his article that sometimes people want to fill them with concrete to make them stronger.
So here's a picture of a monument where we can see that we had to break off all the pieces of the sink around this concrete that they poured inside of it.
And you couldn't just take it apart because you couldn't get the concrete out.
So you had to break off all the zinc around the outside. And then reassemble it and put it all back together without concrete inside of it.
This is what it looked like when it was completed.
So we see these beautiful monuments and some of the ones in the. In cemeteries that I've seen the smaller markers, like 3, 4ft tall.
They'll just be made out of two castings, but they're both the same casting. One's one side, and they cast it again, and it becomes the other side. And they put them together. And if you look closely, you'll see a line that is the seam where the two pieces are joined together. And you watch that line go all the way up one side and come back down the other. Usually, like, from corner to corner.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Right. Now, if I may add, I did some research and stuff like that.
And basically what they did, One of the secret ingredients from one of the companies was that they had linseed oil.
And they put that on there. And what they did then was they hit it with steam, high pressure steam, about 50 psi or above. And they would steam it to make it look like more granite type deal. And then as the elements started hitting it outside, they would have. It would be zinc carbonate. So once the monument was out there, it's almost like bronze. You put fresh bronze out there and it gets a patina. Well, the zinc would do the same thing because it reacted with the elements. So that's one of the researchers. And when they said secret formula, there were different ways of doing it. And one of the companies that was the offset of the monument Bronze Company, they had about five or six different offsets that helped them make it in. One of the big areas was Ohio, where they started doing it and doing more research it. They. They have them at about 30 states. So if you want to start looking in some of the cemeteries, you know, I live in Vermont, and we look at some different ones, and I do go into some of the older ones where they start off with slate, move up to marble, go to granite. And then during that time period, as you're walking around, you can notice a bunch of them because they're very ornate. And you look at it like, wow, you know, people were doing that with granite and all of a sudden comes to find out that it's zinc, so.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Yep, that's right.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: I'm sorry, Tom, I was just going to say I have come across a fair number of zinc or white bronze monuments in the northeast Ohio area, but they are.
They are definitely in small numbers.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: For sure.
For sure.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: So, Tom, do you remember your first encounter with the zinc monument as a conservator?
What sparked your interest in working with this material and what were the challenges?
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Well, it was a real challenge. I think the first one was the one I showed you the picture of where we had to break all the pieces off the concrete over the years as that monument was moved around the city.
And as I mentioned, the monuments are very heavy and they're hollow.
And as we could see in that one picture where they were pouring molten zinc along the corners to bond it together, that extra strengthening in the corners make it strong, makes it hold up pretty good, but it's heavy and it tends to push down on what's below.
And the particular monument that I showed you with the concrete was filled up with concrete up to about 8ft tall. And then on top of that was a huge granite slab and then a carved stone element that was about 3ft tall.
So the concrete was supporting all that. And Then above it, the rest of the monument, they reassembled because over time things had broken, they couldn't replace them. So they had them made in stone, tried to strengthen it all up.
And that was my first encounter because we had to break it all apart and then figure out a way to put it back together.
And we worked on system to learn how to TIG weld tungsten inert gas, weld those ink pieces together, back together again, and then put the whole monument back together again.
It's interesting how they did it because when they were doing it, everything looks brand new, shiny. And of course, they had lots and lots and lots of laborers where these days you don't have that many people working in a shop that are going to make everything happen for you.
Correct.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: So the, the, the welding, the TIG welding, is that your recommended method of reassembling today?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: It, it depends. Every monument is different. If there's one thing that I've learned, I'm working on a lot of different zinc artworks monuments like this lady right behind me, she cast out a zinc.
Many of the zinc monuments that we see outdoors, the statuary is not made in the same manner that the Monumental Bronze Company made things.
You don't see any seams joining things together except maybe a very tiny line because they fitted everything together and they bonded it from the interior.
But there's lots of statuary that was made later, cast out of zinc pieces. They were soldered together and all of those monuments were painted after they were made to hide the seams of the solder. Or there was a company called or Bronze up in Chicago and they cast as in guns, and then they plated them with copper.
We see a lot of those copper plated zinc monuments and mostly they were religious statuary.
And when you look at them, like Jerry said, when something's outdoors and it's made out of a copper alloy like bronze begins to turn green.
The or bronze brand of statuary was zinc, but plated with copper. And when you see it outdoors after it's aged, it looks like it could be bronze, but it's actually made out of zinc. And you can find indications of solder seams that corrode a little bit differently than the rest of it. And you can see, oh, there's like a line there around the waist.
Maybe they put these two pieces together.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: A lot more to it than meets the eye.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: For sure.
I should have probably added when we've worked on the huge monuments like this type of monument here, because they're hollow inside and the top Pieces way down on the bottom pieces.
We developed a process to make a skeleton for the interior of each piece because it's built out of layers so many feet tall.
So each piece, we would build a interior skeleton or armature made out of stainless steel and fit that inside as a skeleton inside of it to carry the weight of the piece above. And the piece above would also have a skeleton inside of it and the next piece above and the next piece above. So on the taller monuments like that, it looks as though they're all sitting on top of each other, but there's actually a very small gap in between each section because the stainless steel skeletons are bolted to each other on the way up as you build it, and that stabilizes it and gives you a much longer longevity.
And as Jerry pointed out, you'll see these in the cemetery. Sometimes they put them on a very nice stone plinth.
Other times they just set them on rubble.
And so over time, things can tilt and change and begin to, you know, lose their structural integrity.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: So the dissimilarity of the metals is not an issue in terms of expansion, contraction, and keeping together over time?
[00:19:35] Speaker C: No, Hasn't. Hasn't shown to be a problem at all.
You know, you have an issue with corrosion with noble metals and lesser noble metals, but with the stainless steel armatures, they don't seem to be an issue.
Sometimes it depends on the piece. Everyone is different. And just when you think you know something, you'll come across one that doesn't meet that at all.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:20:05] Speaker C: The.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: The. The rule, the exception to the rule.
Absolutely.
So Jerry's article, and. And Tom, you also mentioned the. The use of the concrete.
We know now that's probably one of the worst ways to go about the preservation and conservation.
As a. As a monument builder, is there something that I can do? Is there a way that I can go after this or some of my compatriots in the monument industry that may not have any real background in this zinc repair? Is it beyond us or is it some basics that we can learn?
What do you recommend in that regard?
[00:21:03] Speaker B: I wanted to answer that. It's almost like anything else. We need to put the knowledge out there, especially to the retail people. People.
[00:21:11] Speaker C: You.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: A quick short story. We had a convention in Barry, and I was in the cemetery, given a class on how to take photos of the monuments and everything of that nature. And one of the dealers basically came up and said, hey, what does this monument look like? And I told him the history of it and everything of that nature. And we started going over some stuff. We took some photos. Well, about six, seven weeks later, I get a phone call from him saying, gee, Jerry, I'm glad I asked questions. Because they had individuals that had no knowledge of what the zinc was. And some of their recommendations was welding it, pouring concrete in there and everything else. And we had discussed it to say that that would definitely damage it. Because when concrete hardens, not only does it build heat, but it also expands. And these monuments were made to last, but not to be internally imploded, you might say, or exploded or whatever. So he was very thankful on that. And he sa it because it was in one of the states, I don't remember, but it was a precious statue of one of the founding fathers of the city. And here they were going to go and get some individuals, say, oh, I can take care of it, don't worry about it. And he was trying to attack, weld it and try and do other stuff. And he made it worse. And the guy said, gee, you know, we had this here and he did some irreparable damage to it.
And it was one of those things. So I think, like with these podcasts, I would say that an individual needs to recognize it, especially if a customer comes in and then probably have a little bit of a list of individuals to say, hey, if I work with you and people come in here to fix it, how do we do it? Because sometimes the knock in the retail monument shop, they don't have the technical knowledge to help out, but they have the technical knowledge to send it to the proper place person.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: That's. That's exactly right.
When you're used to handling stone, you can rig it a certain way and lift it a certain way. You know exactly how to place it and everything.
With zinc, if somebody goes and tries to put a strap around it and lift it up, they could break it because it's that fragile and it can't take the pressure.
We've worked on pieces all over the country and many soldered together pieces because there's a lot more soldered together zinc statuary than there is monumental bronze type. But as we said, the ones that I see most often from cemeteries, if they aren't the tall monuments, are markers for headstone.
We worked on one that had an urn on top, and in the urn were fronds of yucca plant about 2ft long, and they were solid zinc. So they're about a half an inch thick. It's pretty rare because they like to make it thinner. And these long fronds and there's a couple of fronds missing and many broken off.
So it's a pretty heavy piece of piece of metal. It's a half an inch thick, and it's about 2ft long.
You can't just stick it back on with some solder. It'll break right off. So you have to drill it pins. Use the right type of soldering to put it back together, but with strength. And then we had to cast some missing pieces. So we had to take one of the fronds and use it as a. As a model to mold new fronds, cast them in zinc and put those on, and ultimately it went back. And the critical thing with that was, don't make it look new.
Keep it looking exactly like it looks right now. And so we had to make the new pieces look like the old pieces and make sure that the fellows could just take it back to the cemetery and put it back up themselves. And they did. They were capable of doing that because they took it apart a few times over the years, and they knew that it screwed together and how it fit.
So it's important to work closely with your person who's going to repair it to know that, yes, we can each work together to get the proper thing worked out.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: So I got. I got three immediate takeaways. Right. Monument builders. One, stay in your lane.
Two, know what you don't know.
And three, seek out an expert.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Sounds like a plan. So speaking of experts, Tom, how many folks across the country would you say have the expertise to do this kind of restoration?
[00:25:56] Speaker C: There may be right now that I know of a couple of firms that's about it.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: A couple of firms, wow.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: People have contacted me. We've discussed techniques and way to do it, and they've successfully perform that type of work.
But I don't think there's. There isn't anybody who. That's. That's all they do. They may do a lot of different things, you know, and this is part of one of their skills that they can work on.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: You know, we talk about how hand carving stone is becoming more and more a lost art because fewer and fewer young people are going into this endeavor.
And it's just more and more difficult to employ folks in that endeavor because it costs so much labor today. And so I can clearly understand why there's so few people today that have the expertise.
And it's unfortunate. But on the flip side, fortunately, there are still some folks that you can seek out that do have the wherewithal and the expertise and the Understanding to do this.
So to those monument builders out there that may come across this type of situation, I would certainly recommend that they contact the folks over at McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory to see if they can help you out or refer to someone that they know that might be closer to your area that could help you.
[00:27:34] Speaker C: That's very true. Very true.
We're very fortunate. Mike knows that we are fortunate in this area of northeast Ohio that we have Nick Fairplay in Oberlin, who's master carver, and he had done a lot of stone carving for us over the years and also for. For some major places around the country.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: You know, this reminds me of.
I was in Logan, Ohio, for their washboard festival a couple of weeks ago.
I was invited by another member, Bill Boone, to come down and carve some stone.
And we got the opportunity to visit a bona fide blacksmith. And this blacksmith also had the ability to hot rivet. And so he is one of the leading experts in restoration of these old bridges that have been hot riveted.
So he has the. I know it's a side story, but I find it pretty fascinating.
He's one of the few folks that is qualified to make these repairs. However, he is not certified to make these repairs. The distinction, there isn't anyone alive today that can provide the proper testing to say that he's qualified and he's an expert. And so when he goes about these projects, he'll have an inspector come to check the work. Well, the first thing that he has to do is teach the inspector to exactly what he's looking at because he has no idea what he's inspecting.
So, you know, it's amazing how these. These skills and talents are becoming lost.
And I appreciate the efforts of folks like McKay, Lodge and Tom and all your associates there and Jerry, for trying to keep some of this information alive and present it especially to our members.
So, Tom, are there other missteps that you've seen along the way in terms of attempting to make these repairs?
[00:29:54] Speaker C: Oh, you know how it is.
They'll take it to a body shop and they'll put fiberglass in it and body putty and patch it back together. And we've seen pieces come to us that are like that, and they've been fixed maybe one or two times over the years and spray painted. And we have to reverse all that to the point where we can start putting it back together in a way that'll hold up for decades or another century. And with the bigger monuments, that's what we kind of shoot for.
Talk to cemetery hey, you have to pour a new footer.
This weighs as much. It's going to have to be below frost line. That's a huge piece of concrete to be born in a cemetery. It's like 12 by 12ft and 4 and a half feet deep, something like that.
So there's footers that have to be made. Everything has to be, like, reworked from the scratch to ensure that you've got longevity for the future.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Just one of the things that we talk about, where how do we look for different things and how we help the individuals.
I came across the Oregon Heritage Bulletin, Number 41, September 2023.
Identification and treatment of white bronze monuments. So as you, you know, get more and more and more, the Internet, it's a wealth of knowledge. Where years ago it was me trying to find stuff out, saying, what is it? What's going on? Checking records and stuff like that. So everybody has a lot of stuff in their fingertips and just check things out and, you know, just look at how things are. Because like Tom said, you know, customers bring this in and say, it's broke, fix it.
So, yeah, and it's.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: It's true.
A lot of these things, they're heavy. They're out there in a cemetery, they're broken.
I'm in Ohio, it's in Colorado. They send me pictures. We talk back and forth on the phone and try to come to a understanding of what it's going to take and how it's going to take to do it. And then maybe those will be shipped to us to work on and fix and then ship them back. So that's happened for me. In my personal experience with Vermont, I needed a stone base about a foot and a half tall, about 18 inches in diameter, and it was round.
And I had picture of it, but I couldn't make it. And back in the day, I talked to Vermont Stone. They had a stone lathe. They could actually turn that base for me. And they turned it twice because the first time it happened to fall off and crack. And they made it again, like within a week. And Senate polished verdigris black marble. Oh, it's just amazing.
But like you say in the old days, you couldn't find it. You had to scratch your head. How could I find this with the Internet? Now we have great ability to learn things and see what's going on where.
Track it down.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: So this is. This is the part of the interview where again, I was going to ask for tips and tricks on how to do this, but I guess what I'm going to hear Is again, number one, stay in your lane. Number two, know what you don't know. Number three, refer to an expert.
So conservation, Tom, has, is as much about respect as it is about science. Right, so how do you balance preserving the look of the original piece while adding that modern stabilization and what proper way?
Well, we can't. There. All right, so when.
If a monument has shifted, what's the best way to go about rectifying that situation?
[00:33:50] Speaker C: It depends. Like, when we look at this one here, this is pretty typical. And you'll see these around the country.
That particular soldier that's on top of this, he's got issues from the way that he was made. He's leaning backwards.
He's leaning backwards because he's heavy, and he's leaning backwards because the square base he's standing on caves in a little bit from the weight.
Plus, at the bottom of his coat, there's a funny bit of a casting there. And sometimes they're bending at the bottom of the coattail, but you can't see it.
And when we've had to work on those, we've had to take the whole thing apart.
If it's just a man on the top, and the rest of it's fine, you can probably take off the man on top of the soldier, but you have to disassemble it, make the base square again, take the dip out of it. And sometimes, even when you put the straightened figure back on there, he still looks like he's leaning backwards. So sometimes we have to put the Cuban heel underneath his heels. We have to put some pieces in there to tilt him forward so that he stands up straight.
You can't see any of that from the ground, but it's all up in there. And there's more reinforcement put in to ensure it won't happen in the future.
And like I say, everyone's different. So the one that you saw that was hollow inside, like this. Get up in there. Oh, this one's got a new layer down here that you have to remove first.
Who knows how they did it. Many of these monuments, when we get inside of them, they have the same kind of markings, like a couple black lines or number or dots that show that the same individual put it together. He put his mark in there.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Fascinating. So it sounds like, as far as the local monument dealer, retailer is concerned, he should probably limit his involvement into leveling.
Right. Maybe some foundation work, but that brings its cautions. Right. Because as we work with stone, we're used to choking the stone, slinging it in certain ways. Where we don't have an issue with putting side pressure on those pieces because it's granite, what's going to happen. But with these, that sounds like one of the bigger concerns, right? To be able to lift without the side side pressure. So that would be one caution, it seems, would be pretty straightforward.
If you want to get involved that far, you're probably safe. But beyond that, again, we're professionals when it comes to stone, but tread lightly.
Talking about white bronze and not only.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: That, but when you start looking at different things, sometimes it's just a foundation thing shifting. And over the years, the cemeteries have changed different things. You know, you talk about frost line, you talk about this, and that's some of the things that you're looking at. Like you said to say, hey, I can easily take care of the foundation and find out there's a lot more restrictions. And like you say, you got to choke the monument, you got to do different things. So it's best to kind of like evaluate it and just say, hey, you know, it's nothing against me that I don't know how to tackle, but then I know how to tackle the stone. Even like when you start working sometimes with the marble, I've had people call me up and say, do we have something to take care of that, like, sugary thing to take off the lichen and stuff like that and look at them like, don't do it because the mining won't fall apart. And like, why? You know, you start getting into the cleaning. So it's the same thing with the zinc. You want to maybe clean the base, but you got to watch out the product you're using because it might interact with the zinc and cause more problems than anything else. So it's one of those things where to me, I even have it where put your pride aside, ask questions and go from there. You know, 38 and a half years in the military, you learn things where you don't just shoot. If somebody asks you a question and you don't know, you don't shoot it out, you say, look, I don't know, but I'll find out and go from there. And it doesn't hurt. Because if you shoot something out, especially to high ranking people and they find out it's not true, your word just went downhill. They would rather do that and say, hey, I don't know, but I'll find out.
[00:38:18] Speaker C: Right?
[00:38:18] Speaker A: I think that sound advice for sure.
So final thoughts.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Tom, Jerry, Basically, I believe we discussed it and hopefully this is going to help our retail shops supply shops and everything else of that nature. I think these podcasts are very instructional. And one of the things is we're pushing our members to say, hey, how do I go find it? You know, nowadays the kid will pull it out and start digital mining looking for stuff. And us old timers will say, where's that paperwork? Where did I put it?
[00:38:51] Speaker C: So for me, I would say if you are in charge of a cemetery or you're called to a cemetery, you could advise the cemetery. If they have a zinc monument, they should take a photograph of it from all sides, they should measure it and they should create a file on it. Because in the future, a lawnmower could hit it.
Then they've got a picture of what it's supposed to look like.
That's really important because they're fragile.
We'll go into a cemetery and as you fellas know, you'll see a stone monument. It's sinking, tilting.
The same thing happens with these zinc monuments. Like I said, some of them are put up on what basically amounts to rubble. Over time, dirt and grass grows up around it and it changes and it settles and it moves. So getting a picture of it, dating it for 20, 25, putting in a file in office, would come in really handy in the future.
Not talk about my lifetime or our light, but 25 years from now, 50 years from now, oh, here's what it looked like.
It's really important, especially when it's something that people could take a piece off of.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Good advice.
So what I've learned today is that there is at least one similarity between white bronze memorials and granite memorials. And that is the fact that as strong as they are, they still have a fragility of brittleness, have to protect against damage. So keep that in mind. Again, get involved with an expert, someone that really knows the ins and outs.
Not your local fab shop, not the local welder or handyman.
There's far more involved in restoring and preserving, preserving these monuments. And I think that most consumers or those that are looking to get these works restored are going to appreciate the honest answer that this is out of my bailiwick. We need to bring a conservator in that really knows and has experience.
So I thank you guys for, for joining today and sharing those thoughts and insights.
I really appreciate the time you've taken and I think that those listeners will be more well informed and understand the limitations when it comes to restoration.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: And.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: So the July equipment issue of NB News is where you'll find Jerry's article about Zink Monuments as well as other features. I encourage you to read this issue and be on the lookout for a Zinke in your local cemetery. For mbna, I'm Michael Johns. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen. If you found this worthwhile, please take a minute and share the link with a friend for comments and feedback. We'd love to hear from you. Please drop a note to infoonumentbuilders.org for monument builders of North America, I'm Michael Johns. Have a great day. Thank you.
