no_expression

I do engraving but over the pond.

If a family wants to add another name to a stone do you take it back or are they sandblasted on site? I would guess if there's enough people dying andvdemand for a dedicated headstone installation guy that they won't bother engraving at the cemetary itself.

Also, exactly how often do elderly people pester you with their life stories as you work? :)

That's very cool! :) The reason I ask is we do it always on site, but it's a fairly small country in Europe so I was wondering if it makes sense to haul the gravestones back to a workshop or something in a large country with more volume. Sometimes it's a huge pain to maneuver around cemeteries in a truck. Especially the smaller ones.

I would be very surprised if date of death was chiseled in nowadays, but things might be different in other countries. My dad's been in this line of work since the early-mid 70's and all that time it's been exclusively sandblasting over here.

Yep you got it. We use a simple furniture paint as glue for the gold. Yellow is a good color so it doesn't stick out too much when the gold itself eventually wears. Silver is just a paint and there's very little actual silver in it. It takes literally less than 5 minutes to re-silver a name so if you can somehow score a bunch of those jobs it's very good.

I've done bulk renovations for churches/the state with military memorial slabs and such. Some of the best work I've had. Sounds like you might have a foot in that door already. :)

I'm in Finland. It's the same over here about being able to work until November only. I thought it was a local thing! The reason is ground freeze here as well, plus the fact the state church owns all the cemeteries' land and won't allow it. I don't mind too much, I work from early-mid May until October and make a good living doing it.

I would suggest learning to renovate stones as well. I assume leaf gold and silver is in use there as well? That's an excessively simple process and can be a lucrative business. Leaf gold (in our climate, which is likely similar to yours) is good for like 7 years depending and needs to be re-applied then. Sandblasting is easy in and of itself, but making the mask with a gazillion different fonts out there is a major pain in the ass. It definitely takes some artistic talent and is a time investment. I've been doing this for 11 years and still more often than not I will pass on a stone I can't print the mask for.

Here's my tapecutter for making masks

Sometimes cemeteries come with a view!