At a recent meeting of Rural Lodge, our Master, Wor. Paul Ricciardi, demonstrated a Mason’s tool called the Lewis. A Lewis is a simple but ingenious device employed by operative Masons to raise heavy blocks of dressed stone into place. It consists of three metal parts: two wedge-shaped side pieces, and a straight center piece, that fit together (tenon).  A dovetailed recess is cut into the top of the stone block (mortise). The two outer pieces are inserted  first and then spread by the insertion of the centrepiece. The three parts are then bolted together, a metal ring or shackle is attached and the block is hoisted by hook, rope and pulley. By this means, the block is gripped securely. Once set in its place in the structure, the lewis is removed leaving the upper surface smooth with no clamp or chains on the outside to interfere with the laying of the next course.

    Wor. Paul demonstrated the actual tool used by his father, an operative Mason (as well as a Freemason), who worked in the granite quarries of Quincy. 

    In Freemasonry, the son of a Mason is known as a “Lewis.”   In the days of operative Masonry, it was a great source of pride when a son followed in his father’s footsteps and was Entered as an Apprentice, his name ‘entered’ on the roll, and thereby admitted to the lodge.  To study his father’s skills and learn to use his father’s tools were manifest expressions of the greatest honour and esteem a son could pay. It was common to carry on the tradition through several generations in the same family. It is a heart-warming day when a young man first shows interest in Freemasonry and asks his father how he might become a Mason, and it is a proud day when that son, in the fullness of time, is admitted a member of his father’s lodge by Initiation.

    To commemorate this important occasion in the lives of both father and son, the Grand Lodge has authorized the wearing of a special pocket jewel featuring the operative Mason’s Lewis.