Stonemasons manually carve and assemble stone for construction purposes. While cnc operated carving equipment is the industry standard, artisanal carving for ornamental stone is still done manually.

Tasks

Tasks include -
(a) Driving wedges into quarried stone to break it into slabs or blocks;
(b) Selecting and grading slabs and blocks of granite, marble, and other stone;
(c) Cutting, shaping and finishing building and monumental stone such as granite or marble using hand tools or hand-held power tools;
(d) Making patterns and marking shapes on stone for subsequent sawing, planing, drilling and other dressing and cutting operations;
(e) Cutting and carving characters, figures or designs on stone blocks used for monuments or memorials;
(f) Setting stone in the erection of monuments and memorials;
(g) Repairing and replacing stonework on old buildings, churches and monuments.