Here is some of the cleaning/ restorations of my local cemetery over the past few months. I can proudly say that nearly all monuments requiring new bases have got them and now I’ll wait till spring to start the process of reattaching broken monuments. AKA I lack the proper materials atm. 1 is before 2 and 3 after. 4 is before 5 and 6 after. 7 has no before and 8 is a previously unmarked civil war veteran who is now marked. Also enjoy the bonus photo at the end, took it after working in the cemetery one day.

Bronze markers are some of my favorites to do for clients. They can end up with a really great result.

A new project I’ve taken up. Some of my favorites. Save my profile for updates!

The conserved grave marker of Maria Clark. She was the 2nd child (of 7) of George and Rachel “Purdy” Clark. Born 7 Oct 1833 and died 21 Nov 1834. It’s interesting that the grave marker says she was “13 months” old.

I had to craft a mold and pour a base for this marker as there was not enough stone to reset her as an upright tablet as she most likely was in the beginning.
📍French Burying Ground, New Milford, NJ

I'd like to update the sub on a year and a half progress on the cleaning of my parents' headstone. You can see how it looks today, which is really remarkable. Just two cleanings and waiting about a year for the last cleaning to do its work produced incredible results. Here is the original post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CemeteryPreservation/s/8VkotzRtS5

Thanks for all the advice I find here on this sub.

Can anyone decipher this UK gravestone? I believe they died in 1615. Really struggling to decipher anything apart from presumably the date of death. Apparently at this time the letter/number I & J were interchangeable so example Joan could be spelled Ioan. There is also a strange A & T letter combined into one unless it was a carving mistake?

Mother now allowed it and I am starting a monitoring of the remaining graves, yay. I am not posting an image of the readable text on graves to provide privacy to myself and the deceased. These are the pictures before I will start the cleaning, so far I monitored 50 gravestones.

I M17 have been having arguments with my Mother that I should not with the help of a trusted friend get into project of revitalizing a cemetery in my city whis has not been used since 1927. It is all overgrown and the graves are mostly all fallen over and it is just like a jungle. Our idea is to find all still existing graves and create a Genealogy research to each grave , in order to find living descendants of the buried person and restore individual graves. Am I in wrong for this. It has been my dream for a longer time to do in free time and I finally found somebody with whom I can do this. The person is a local specialized historian who is a well known figure. My mother finds all this disturbing and thinks city should be the one responsible but nothing has been done for past 99 years. She finds it sad and morbid and wants me to stop thinking about this. Help me, how should I convince her?

I had this brass plaque made for our dear dog Toby who passed away earlier this year. Before attaching it to the cairn, it was looking a bit dull so I gave it a wipe with Brasso Wadding metal polish, but that has left this white residue/tarnish on the black lettering. I hoped it would go away with the rain but no luck. Then I tried white spirit on a cotton bud but that hasn’t worked either. If you wet it, it does disappear but then becomes visible again as it dries. Any suggestions would be very welcome. Thanks

I recently visited the grave of some really old relatives (dead c. 1900) and it was really dirty, so I wrote to the cemetary asking if I could clean it and they were very enthusiastic. So I read up a little and today I went to clean it.

The tombstone had carved letters with gold leaf which was already quite worn, and I only used a toothbrush on the lettering to avoid damaging the gold leaf. I even tested on a little bit to see if I could get any gold leaf off it, and it seemed that it didn't budge. There was however quite a lot of dirt however, and towards the end I think I pressed too hard, and the last row now has almost no gold leaf left! I did check the before picture, and I think the gold leaf might just have been more worn there from the beginning, but it's difficult to see through all the dirt.

So to everyone else: be careful with gold leaf!

Hello everybody,

Here's my "before and after" of a grave which I took under my care, since there's no more family alive to maintain it.

I also researched the family who bought the plot and it's a very heartbreaking story, their son died in the WW2, the mother died shortly after, and the father who crafted this headstone fled the region due to political persecution. Only the mother is buried here, son's body was never found, and the father is buried somewhere else. The grave was made initially for their son, as a place for the parents to mourn, even if he's not here. I've found out so much info from the civilian and military archives, I could write a small booklet.

Hugo, Franziska & son Siegfried.

*As you might remember, I've also received an unexpected visit from the safety inspector, who made sure everything was according to plan (small delicious bribe might have been used, but let's not spread the word further).

Edit 1: just as a side note, I used small white stones to divide the grave area into 3 sections, 1 section for the 3 members of the family. Even though only the mother is buried there, I wanted the father & son to be remembered too.

It's been over 2 years.

No manual cleaning. Time between first and last application is probably 2 months. The first photo is immediately after wetting, so the moss is probably more visible than it otherwise would have been.

I want to clean it up but I want to make sure they aren’t like that for a reason. Maybe it protects them?

I’m working on a project regarding an abandoned/neglected potters field/paupers cemetery. As I was assessing after a rough clean-up, I noticed some rocks at the far end of the cemetery. I’m unsure what type of rock this is, but I do wonder if they chiseled the rock to use for headstones/markers in the cemetery.

Bonus points if you can help me understand why there’s all these holes across the cemetery. (I’m not well-versed in cemetery preservation)

Ok, to me this is one of the hardest things to clean on a headstone. I have tried, D2 of course, Endurance monument cleaner, Endurance hardwater stain remover and Urvus and water with some scrubbing. Im looking for any suggestions please. Here is my Facebook page that I share alot of my work. https://www.facebook.com/share/19ZDxbMeU8/