Six faces, and the spec decides how many of them cost money
Take a die 36 long, 8 thick and 24 high. The front is 864 square inches and so is the back. The two ends are 8 by 24, which is 384 together. The top is 36 by 8, or 288. The bottom is another 288 and it never gets finished because it sits on the base.
Polish the front and back only and you have 1,728 square inches, which is 12 square feet. Polish everything but the bottom and you have 2,400, which is 16.67. That is 4.67 square feet of extra polishing, an increase of just under 39 percent, for two ends and a top that are visible only to someone standing at the side of the stone.
| Spec | Faces polished | Square inches | Square feet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front only | 1 | 864 | 6.00 |
| Front and back | 2 | 1,728 | 12.00 |
| Front, back, top | 3 | 2,016 | 14.00 |
| All but the bottom | 5 | 2,400 | 16.67 |
Notice how uneven the steps are. Adding the back doubles the area. Adding the top after that costs only two square feet, because a top face on an 8 inch die is a narrow strip. Adding the two ends costs another 2.67. The largest faces are also the first ones anybody would think to polish, so the marginal cost of each additional finish step falls as the spec gets more complete.
The base top is a ring, not a rectangle
A 48 by 12 base has 576 square inches of top, but the die stands on 288 of it. What gets polished is the margin round the die, which is the other 288 — exactly half. Change the base to 48 by 14 and the margin goes to 384, up a third, because the extra two inches of width runs the whole 48 inch length.
The base sides are usually the larger number and they get forgotten because they are only 8 inches tall. On a 48 by 12 by 8 base the perimeter is 120 inches, so the four sides are 960 square inches, or 6.67 square feet — more than three times the top margin. A base finished on its sides is a bigger polishing job than the die top and ends put together.
Rough faces are not free faces
Anything not polished still gets something done to it, and the calculator keeps that area separate rather than dropping it. A steeled, honed or sawn face costs less per square foot than a polished one but not nothing, and a rock-pitched face is a hand operation with its own rate that has nothing to do with area at all. The only surface that genuinely costs nothing is the bed of the die and the bottom of the base, because they are never seen.
Where the arithmetic here goes soft is on shape. A serp top, a chamfered edge, a moulded margin or a carved panel all have more surface than their rectangular footprint, and they take longer per square foot besides. Everything on this page treats a face as a flat rectangle, which makes the total a floor and never a ceiling.
Deciding the spec before the block is cut
Finish is not a decision that can be deferred cheaply. A face polished after the stone is set is a job done on a ladder in a cemetery, and a face not polished when it should have been is a colour mismatch forever, because polished and unpolished granite of the same stone read as two different materials. Settle the spec at the drawing, work the square feet, and put the figure in the quote rather than in the notes.
Questions people ask
What does polish 2 or polish 5 mean on a monument?
They are shop shorthand for how many faces of the die are polished. Two is normally the front and back; five is everything except the bed the die sits on. Three usually means front, back and top. The shorthand is common but it is not universal, and the sensible habit is to write out which faces are being polished on the order rather than trusting the number to travel between two shops that may count differently.
How much extra does polishing the ends and top cost?
On the die in the worked example it is 4.67 square feet on top of 12, or just under 39 percent more polished area. What that costs depends entirely on the rate you or your fabricator work to, which is why the rate is an input here rather than a figure on the page. The proportion is the transferable part: on a thin die the ends are narrow and the increase is modest, and on a thick die it is a much bigger jump.
Do I count the bottom of the die?
Only if you are actually finishing it, which is unusual. The bed of the die sits on the base and the bottom of the base sits on the foundation, so neither is seen and neither is normally polished. The calculator keeps both in a separate rough total so that the surface area of the stone still adds up, which matters if you are estimating anything that scales with total surface rather than with visible finish.
How do I handle a shaped or carved face?
Take the rectangular area from here as the floor and add for the shape yourself, or ask whoever is doing the carving for their own figure. A curved or moulded surface has more area than its footprint and it also runs slower per square foot, so the two effects compound. There is no general multiplier worth quoting because the difference between a light chamfer and a deep moulding is an order of magnitude.
Does the cemetery care what finish I use?
It might, and it is entitled to. Permitted materials, colours and finishes are part of the rules an individual cemetery sets for its own sections, along with size and whether an upright monument is allowed there at all. Those rules differ between cemeteries and between sections of the same cemetery, and they change. Get them in writing from the cemetery office before the spec is settled, and take anything ambiguous to your monument dealer.