Gadder

nounStandard termMining

A specialized drilling machine used to cut lines of holes in dimension stone quarries.

A piece of quarrying equipment designed to drill a closely spaced series of parallel holes into a rock face. Once the holes are drilled, wedges are driven into them to split away large, intact rectangular blocks of stone without using explosives. It is traditionally used in marble and granite extraction.

Heard on the job

Set the gadder up on the next bench and drill a line on six-inch centers so we can split this block cleanly.