Meet the maker: John Gordon

Project Maker (s): John Gordon

Country/Area: Groton, VT, USA

Links to the Maker: Facebook

Maker Bio:

I am a retired computer engineer. I have been retired for 33 years and have loved every minute of it (I was 42 when I retired). To quote a friend”s wife “Here is a man with lots of time on his hands – and knows how to use it”.

Project Name: Granite Calliope

Project Introduction:

I had a really big rock sticking out of the ground a few feet in my field and I had been mowing around it for 30 years. One day I was driving by it with the backhoe and decided to find out how big it was. After several hours of digging, I had unearthed a whale shaped rock that was 5 feet high, 6 feet wide, 13 feet long and weighed an estimated 50,000 pounds. To split the rock I drill a series of holes ¾” in diameter and about 6” deep to accept the wedges. After drilling the hole, dust and chips have to be removed before inserting the wedge. I use a blow gun and compressed air to clean the holes. It took about 3 days and several hundred holes to break the whale into 2 foot cubes. To amuse myself while drilling all those holes, I would blow air across the holes, like blowing on a bottle, to make the holes whistle. The holes would make different sounds depending how deep they were. I wondered if I could tune a rock. All of a sudden I had the idea of building a granite calliope.