A skilled carver was hired to begin the carving. He rode up on the new elevator and studied from arm’s length the acre of granite which he was expected to fashion into three horsemen. He found that he simply could not visualize such gigantic figures at such close range.
The foreman of the working crew, Roy Faulkner, a young Marine veteran from nearby Covington, experimented with the new carving tool to be used, and discovered he had a knack for it. Although the foreman had never had an art lesson, and his only previous experience with stones was throwing them, he was assigned some smoothing tasks by sculptor Hancock while the search continued for an experienced carver. Soon the search was forgotten. Roy Faulkner stayed on the face of the mountain for more than six years, to complete the world’s largest carving.
The new tool was the thermo-jet torch developed for use in granite quarries. It consisted of an eight-foot pipe fed by three hose lines. One hose carried kerosene, another oxygen, and the third water to be sprayed through the jet nozzle to keep it cool. The operator could adjust the flame to any temperature up to 4,000 degrees.
When such intense heat strikes granite the moisture between molecules is suddenly converted into steam, literally exploding the surface crystals, or flaking them off, as quarrymen say. Flakes fell away in a continuous stream. In coarse, deep gouging, slivers as big as dinner plates and half an inch thick, sailed off the mountain like miniature red-hot flying saucers.
One thermo-jet torch could remove several tons of stone in a day; more than 48 men could do in a week with drills and wedges. Carving with it was a one-man job. Two men trying to work in the same area would have bombarded each other with hot rocks. Even one could expect some lumps. Exploding flakes popped out in many directions, sometimes straight back, or ricochetting off the mountain or steel cables. The operator wore a plastic shield over his face, as well as muffs to protect his ears from the roar of the torch, which was the dominant sound in the north end of the Park for six years.
The torch acted like a miniature jet engine, developing about as much backward thrust as an automatic shotgun. The carver had to keep his body braced against this force as long as the flame was lit.
Fine carving was done with a tool half as large. With the flame adjusted as thin as an acetylene torch’s, it could cut along a pencil mark.
The carving was continued from Lukeman’s master model, with several important changes made by Hancock. He stopped the monument below the riders’ knees, creating an illusion that the horsemen were just emerging from the rough stone. This saved months of carving that would have produced no more than a view of horses’ legs and hooves. The army that Lukeman planned to have following behind was left off entirely, making the three leaders the entire monument. The sculptor lowered the head and neck of General Lee’s horse so that more of President Davis and his horse could be seen, and he gave Davis a civilian hat instead of the campaign hat Lukeman modeled. And, Hancock modeled a new head of Stonewall Jackson to make him look more like the photographs taken just before the General’s death.
Looking at the finished work, it seems amazing that a man could get his first lesson in carving on the world’s biggest monument, and go on to complete it. In explaining how he carved, Faulkner said that mostly he measured. If he was to start a new feature, like the knuckle of General Lee’s first finger, he measured the distance to it from his center line on the master model. Then he checked to get the distance to the knuckle from Lee’s ear, his nose, Davis’ eye, the ear tips of the horses, and other spots. Interpolating inches on the model to feet for the mountainside, he measured from corresponding points on the carving. When all the measurements came out at the same place, he drilled a hole there to the exact depth corresponding to the distance from the knuckle to the plumb line at the front of the model. To insure against cutting away too much of the adjoining stone, he measured and drilled depth holes for all of the features nearby.
After making certain that all the measurements were correct, he fired up the large torch and cut down to within half an inch of the bottom of the holes, then switched to the smaller torch to carve the rest of the way.