Appointed in October, 1825, to the combined position of architect and superintendent, Willard spent the following winter on the plans, models, and computations required to develop the construction details, from the over-all dimensions of the Baldwin Report. During these preliminary steps, Willard experimented with a promising machine for dressing the stones. The selection of the Bunker Hill Quarry in Quincy, Mass., was made after Willard had made a careful search for suitable stone, in which he was said to have walked 300 miles. The right to quarry, at Quincy, sufficient granite for the monument was purchased for $325. Part of the amount to be provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was to have been supplied by the cost of the dressing of the stone (then called “hammering”) by the convicts of nearby Charlestown State Prison. The convicts, however, were obviously not sufficiently independent to work on this shrine of independence, so this procedure was not adopted. _Up-To-Date Quarry (Circa 1825–1843)_ From various old American and English records of masonry construction, it is possible to construct an account of how the stones for the Bunker Hill Monument must have been quarried and dressed. The old names are used for the tools and methods, and the modern mason will find many of these old descriptions quite familiar. The hornblende granite of the Quincy region was (and is) of very uniform texture and varies only in color, from gray to dark gray. In Quincy, Willard would find that both “sheet” and “boulder” quarry formations occurred: the joints in the ledge of the sheet areas making the granite appear as if stratified, and hence more easily removed; but the huge, rounded boulders in the other areas, measuring up to 40 feet across, had no joints. Rows of holes were drilled by hand (at least 25 years would elapse before practical power-rock drills became available) and large blocks loosened from the ledge or boulder, probably by wedges, possibly by light blasts of gunpowder. At this stage the quarried block was called “quarry-pitched.” Stone of the smaller size for the monument was split from these blocks along lines of holes in which wedges were driven. These were probably of the plug-and-feather type, in which an iron wedge with an acute angle is fitted between two semicircular iron feathers, which taper in the opposite direction to that of the wedge, and thus fit the hole drilled in the stone, nicely. Granite has no cleavage planes, like slate; but a routine of smart taps on the plugs, back and forth along the line, soon splits the stone along a fairly smooth face. Two lewises (an ancient device), attached at about the quarter points of the top of the stone, were used to lift it. Three members make the lewis: a flat center bar with an eye at the top, the center bar being flanked by two wedge-shaped side pieces which are thicker at the bottom of the hole, and these also have eyes at the top.