02 Skifer

01 Drill, lump hammer, sledgehammer

To drill holes for the explosives, the miners would use a drill and strike it with a feeijsel, a large double-headed lump hammer. One miner held the drill while another punched it with the lump hammer. Then the rock was split up in chunks with a sledgehammer before it was moved to processing.

02 Sledgehammer, lump wedge, stone axe

A raw piece of quartzite is called a klomp, a ‘lump’. The miner chips off the upper 10 cm with a sledgehammer and a lump wedge. When the cleavage does not go all the way through the lump, the miner uses a stone axe to split it off.

03 Rock splitting wedge, hammer

The layers are then split up into thick or thin slabs with a splitting wedge and hammer. Now the miner can see if he has ‘read the rock’ correctly. The thicker slabs are sawed into paving and staircase material in the sawing plant in Alta. The thin ones are cut into tiles for floors, roofs, walls and paving near the mountain quarries.

A splitting wedge needs to be sharp in order to cut into the cleavage with accuracy. New wedges were rather long but became shorter with each sharpening. This well-worn splitting wedge was probably made by the blacksmith Daniel Heitmann from Alta. It was found in Pæska in 2017 on the site where his son Didrik Heitmann lived in the early 20th century. Source: The donors Tormod and Bjarne Heitmann, Didrik’s grandchildren and Daniel’s great grandchildren.

04 Roofing tile templates

Roofing tiles are produced in squares or as scallop tiles – a drop-like shingle format. In the old days, the templates were made of wood but had an iron binding to keep them from degrading and shrinking. Today, they are made of iron only. This tile template was found in a quarry far up in the eastern Alta River valley.

05 Roofing tile templates, scribe, splitting rod

All the tiles on a quartzite roof need to be of the exact same size and shape. The miners placed a template on top of the rock slab and etched in the contours around it. Before cutting the slab they used a splitting rod to chip off large surplus pieces.

06 Tile templates

Standard templates for tiles of eight different sizes.

07 Vossa scissors

Til slutt klippes steinen etter omrisset. Vossasaksen kom til Alta for omtrent 100 år siden, og gjorde produksjonen av takstein mye enklere. I dag drives saksene med elektrisitet.