This past Memorial Day at Ithaca City Cemetery a great turn out of volunteers appeared to help clean and preform some maintenance. I can’t confirm the total number but from what I gathered it was near two dozen people who came and went, over the three hour morning volunteer period. Most of the time I spent was working on resetting a small obelisk about 3 ½ feet tall. The limestone base was in three pieces with the marble socket completely detached. The base stone was mortared together with a neat roman cement and the infilled with a pigmented roman cement to match the host base stone, to provide stability to the marble socket. The repaired base stone was leveled in gravel and sand. The marble socket was set with a Natural Hydraulic Lime 3.5 mixed with marble aggregate, on top of the base and then the obelisk set in the same mix. The color of the patch looked good after completion but I checked it a week later and it is indistinguishable from the host stone.

Check back soon for more photos to see how the patch has cured to match and the application of D/2 Biological Solution has cleaned up the marble.