Cemetery Lettering

The Art of Blasting on Location

What is Cemetery Lettering?
Cemetery Lettering is a term used to describe a mobile sandblaster. There are many folks who prefer to purchase their family monuments pre-need. In these cases the final dates are left off the stone and will need to be added (hopefully much) later down the road. When the need arises a mobile sandblaster with many years of experience will go to the location of the memorial and add lettering to match the existing stone. We take great pride in this work as it is extremely important to those who purchase pre-need. This is how we go about making sure your memorial is worth purchasing now.

Conveniently Mobile
Lettering on site is not always an easy task. In fact, it is usually the most difficult but without having a mobile sandblaster, the stone would have to be picked up and lettered in the manufacturing facility. This becomes a strenuous task after the memorial has already been set. When we recieve an order to add final dates, a list is made of all the locations. Then our lettering truck begins making rounds.

The Blasting Process
The first step is taking a rubbing on the existing letters. Using a special rubbing paper the sheet is placed over the stone and a sample is taken by pressing a semi-soft wedge over the entire surface. This takes an exact copy of the current font, style, size, and shape of everything on the stone. The sample is then brought back to the main office for comparison and preparation.

The lettering on the rubbing sample is scanned into the computer and the exact font is matched against a database of text. The design team then pulls up the original order, or creates a new one (depending on when and if the original stone was ordered through Patten’s), and builds a stencil layout based on the existing stone. A rubber stencil is cut and sent back to the lettering team.

Once everything has been double checked, the lettering truck goes back out and begins their work. The stone is cleaned and the stencil is attached to the blast area. A small mobile sand blaster is powered up and the rest of the stone is covered for protection. Our experienced field technician then blasts the stencil to the appropriate depth and removes any adhesive left behind after removing the rubber. The final dates have been added as an exact match and the stone is left clean and beautiful

Quick, clean, and easy, we gauruntee your personal satisfaction in purchasing a pre-need memorial. Patten’s has been known to do other light jobs with the mobile blaster such as adding letters to a granite sign for a companies and blasting addresses into large boulders. Please contact us for more information about cemetery lettering.

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