Summary Record

Date 2012

Event ID 974694

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Summary Record

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/974694

Kays of Scotland, Curling Stone Manufacturers, 9 Barskimming Road, Mauchline, East Ayrshire (NS42NE 33.01)

With a manufactory originally dating from 1851 Kay's of Mauchline, Ayrshire are unique in the UK for the manufacture and export of curling stones to venues around the World making high precision curling stones for international competition and club use. Curling is a sport in which teams of players slide specially shaped stones over sheet ice to a target. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard and has a long and complicated history with several countries, including Scotland, claiming to have invented it.

The granites used in the production of curling stones at Kay's come from Ailsa Craig island (NX 019 997) located in the Firth of Clyde some 10 miles (16km) west of Girvan, South Ayrshire. Kay's have been involved in providing curling stones for every Winter Olympics since Chamonix in 1924 and has

produced all of the stones for the last five, and the upcoming Sorchi, Winter Olympic Games.There are four broad stages in the making of a curling stone: cutting, shaping, polishing and finishing for which special coring machines and saws (for cutting), lathes (for shaping and drilling) and polishing wheels and shot-blasting machines for finishing are packed into a relatively small floor area. Despite being mechanised for the main cutting and shaping of the curling stone, the workforce is highly skilled and there is a lot of hands-on refining of the curling stones throughout the manufacturing process.

Visited by RCAHMS (MMD) 2012.