Our Products Restore: Halifax Citadel Masonry
Various products helped our customers with a long term restoration project on the Halifax Citadel (Photo Credit: Tourism NS). This type of masonry was very specialized, and thus required specialized masonry products.
The ultimate goal was to stabilize the masonry that had suffered from water damage. The ongoing restoration involved various stages, with the team sometimes working year-round.
Some of the restoration meant entire sections of stonework had to be removed. This process is done in such away that preserves the stones themselves. Each stone was removed, numbered and photographed. These stones were then placed on pallets and carefully recorded and stored. When it was ready to be rebuilt, each stone was returned to its original home. Work on such monumental historic sites is key to making sure we don’t lose this history.
Some of the masonry products Bird Stairs supplied included diamond blades, drill bits, Bosch drills, Dewalt cordless battery tools and reciprocating saws. Masonry of this kind requires tools that are built for this exact work. Bits, blades and tools are hard-used when working on hard stone like granite.
In this case the contractor was using a lot of our Bosch 5/8” SDS + drill bits and Bosch RH432VC SDS + Hammer drills . These were specifically used to anchor lifting eye bolts to pull up each stone that had to be repointed. Pallets of our TYPE SA Mortar Lime. were required This lime is mixed with the new mortar, used to repoint all of the new mortar joints during reconstruction.
Dewalt Cordless 9” Cut Off Saws DCS690X2 with a 9” diamond blade was used for removing mortar joints that a standard grinder could not reach. This is the saw in the video below:
We asked Site Supervisor, Ashley what one of the best parts of the job was:
Seeing apprentices learning the techniques they aren’t going to come across in college or their career. For example, working on barrel vaulted ceilings made out of brick, and making the formwork for this. Arches as long as 20 feet long had to come down, and this sort of work is not that common. They used traditional methods and materials and the apprentices learned tricks of the trade from the older guys. People don’t build these sorts of things anymore.