2017White Water Quarry: Maiden Flight of a White Giant
A new mining technique is successfully tested for the first time in the White Water Quarry (Weißwasserbruch). With the so-called "Hans Hauser ceiling cutting method", white marble blocks weighing several tonnes and measuring eleven by five metres are cut free from the ceiling using three-metre-deep narrow channels and then cut off on the roof side using a diamond wire saw so that the 445-tonne block can be brought down vertically in one piece from the ceiling of the quarry gallery. Under the weight of gravity, the block literally falls from the ceiling to the ground. The mining method first tested in Carrara in the Cava Ronchieri was further developed by the quarry manager of the White Water Quarry, Hans Hauser. Two additional holes drilled into the ceiling allow a cut to a few centimetres above the fracture point until the block of marble weighing several tonnes is excavated. A bed of marble gravel gently catches the "white giant". The new method allows the marble to be quarried from the top down. At the largest natural stone trade fair in Europe, the Marmo+Mac in Verona, Lasa Marmo presents the work of the Swiss sculptor Christian Bolt "the Nature of things", which can be walked on barefoot, at its stand.
