Pry bars and cheater pipes may now retire. After years, nay, decades of finding myself too much of a lightweight to straighten leaning monuments, and a decade of designing, modifying and despairing over a contraption to ease the monument maintenance task, then shepherding pennies to finance the fabrication of the beast, it is ready for its first test flight. It won't get off the ground, but the first monument might. Behold the four-cornered multi-adjustable monument jack:
Historic monuments were installed plumb, some of them more than a century ago. Susan Skibbe died in 1892. The Skibbe/Dalgity monument, like other historic monuments, was no longer upright, exactly. Over time, settling soil and tunneling moles caused it to lean, and caused some to topple. Now, with less effort, they can be reset plumb and level.
Tension bolts cause the non-marking pads to grip the stone with enough force to hold it as the upward pressure of the corner jacks lift and level the stone.
Once the socket is filled and leveled with sand, gravel or concrete, the monument is lowered back into place, the contraption disassembled, and the soil and sod restored around the base. The monument is then ready for the next step in restoration.
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