After 21 years of going to the international Marmomac stone show in Verona, I’ve seen plenty of progress in the industry, and changes in products. and vendors. I’ve walked miles of aisles, talked to probably thousands of different people from a wide range of countries, and eaten the full gamut of paninis on offer for lunch. And is there anything I miss from those first few days in the 2000s? From an industry perspective, it’s probably the withdrawal of most of the major international players in quartz surfaces, although that may be changing in the early 2020s. But personally … oh yeah, there’s an old favorite that, in recent years, keeps fading away. I miss gang saws. Lots of gang saws. All of us know that stone doesn’t come out of the ground in neat slices and ready to cut up into countertops. Something must cut those huge raw blocks and boulders from quarries down to size. For years the instrument of choice was the gang saw. Gang saws look like something right out of the early days of the Industrial Revolution, where machines loomed like large metal instruments of terror. Essentially, the principle involved multiple blades with teeth as wide as a Red Bull can moving back-and-forth through a block like a monster bread-loaf slicer. Keeping those blades moving involved powering a massive flywheel, with some reaching 15’ or better in diameter. The technology involved is straight out of the 19th century, and would easily fit into any steampunk scenario or a tragic dismemberment in the plot of a Charles Dickens novel.. Early on in my career in stone, there would be a line of different models sitting in one of the Marmomac exhibit halls. The gang saws weren’t cutting anything on the show floor — few of the parts moved at all when on display — but they didn’t need to, either. Just seeing these huge pieces of steel machinery would give me a sense of awesome power. Seeing one in action at a factory bordered on the frightening. With diamond-embedded blades, these machines literally crunched through granite, marble, and other natural stone. This was raw machine power dismembering some of the hardest things found in nature. At least newer blades make the job easier. Before the influx of industrial diamonds embedded in sawblades, operators would toss steel shot into the crevices of cuts to provide cutting friction. You gotta think major factories had a One-Eyed Otis or two on the payroll as part of the veteran gang-saw crew. Gang saws still operate in much of the stone industry around the world, although the modern interest – and plenty of machines at Marmomac – lies with diamond-wire cutting. Multiple-cable cutters are big, impressive machines, but the operations seem smooth and almost clinical. Diamond-wire cutters impress with finesse. Gang saws, by comparison, terrify with brute force. There is a kind of terrible beauty to the gang saw as a powerful symbol of man-over-nature, of a day when big jobs called for brawny machines. Maybe it’s more nostalgia than anything else, but I still miss all those hulking tools of the trade on display.