British engineers Wells Wellcut have built a heavyweight 2m gantry bridge saw for quarry company Stainton in Durham.

The leviathan has joined the range of saws and croppers now available from Wells for the stone industry. The smallest version will have a 1600mm blade and a price tag of about £28,000. A completely portable version is also available with its own stanchions, saving about £4,500 on building walls with the associated foundations. The saws can be made (within limits) to suit the size and dimensions required by customers.

The saw Wells installed this month (January) at Stainton was nearly 9m long with a 7m bridge driven on eight wheels at either end and with 12 wheels across the top. Movement back to front, side to side and up and down is driven by inverters while the saw is driven by a 45kW motor.

Luke Wells of Wells Wellcut says the saw is a straight forward, easy to use piece of heavy engineering without complicated computer controls, ideal for the British block processing market. He says it is so solid it is accurate to less than 1mm. "It's proper old fashioned engineering."

He says it develops 1,000Nm of torque, which is as much as the 6.75litre twin-turbo V8 of the top-of-the range Bentley Arnage. "It would have pulled the Titanic," says Luke.