Onsite Training in Louisville, Kentucky
Cave Hill Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. The 296 acre property was first constructed in 1848. Civil Engineer Edmund Francis Lee designed the cemetery with winding paths, graves across the tops of hills, and lakes and ponds in the valley. The cemetery’s beautiful landscape was the perfect setting for a Jahn certification workshop.
We were contacted by Michael Higgs, the Cave Hill Cemetery Foundation Manager, who wanted to learn more about our products and best practices for preserving historic monuments, mausoleums, and gravestones. Our goal was to educate the Cave Hill Cemetery maintenance staff, Schnell Contracting, and a group of young interns from the World Monuments Fund. Cleaning, fixing, and restoring these historic structures needs to be done with the utmost care. Any products used on such projects need to be carefully thought out. Teaching groups about proper materials and restoration methodologies is at the heart of Cathedral Stone's work.
We began the training program with a presentation on the “The Evolution of Mortar,” which highlights our position that substrate-specific mortars are critical to long-term, non-harmful restoration. Compatibility, vapor permeability, and proper mortar installation techniques are always the focus in these presentations.
After patching several stones on day one, we challenged the class by having them perform overhanging patches. We also spent time working on ornate decorative repairs on a variety of substrates such as Terra- Cotta and Brownstone.
Lastly, we went out in the field. After two days of patching and instructing, it was time to test the group's newly acquired stone patching skills. We were able to spend a third day working on some of the actual monuments in the cemetery. We pressure washed, reset stones that had shifted, and prepared each area with a hammer and chisel prior to installing any Jahn patching Mortar. We also demonstrated the crack injection process using our micro-injection grout. This was extremely valuable as the group got to experience the entire restoration process starting with cleaning and ending with finishing the newly installed patches.
Overall, our experience at Cave Hill Cemetery was fantastic. We greatly enjoyed working together with the cemetery staff, interns, and contracting group. We were able to learn from each other's experiences, tell great stories of successful restoration projects, and even debate on certain topics. We also enjoyed seeing some of the most notable burial sites such as Mohammed Ali and KFC’s founder, Colonel Sanders.
We look forward to our continued relationship with The Cave Hill Cemetery as we continue our promise to help Preserve History’s Future.
