How Long Does It Take To Create A Memorial Headstone?

Making a new memorial can take several weeks, mainly depending on the type of headstone. It’s not that simple to provide families with the exact time frame for making a monument due to different variables that can either delay or speed up the manufacturing process.

It can take a few weeks to create a new memorial headstone provided you select a prefabricated design, and a smaller, rather flat monument. On the other hand, it can also take months to produce one if you order a highly customized headstone using a high-quality stone and hand-cut engraving.

Here, we will discuss some of the top reasons why it takes a considerable amount of time to create a memorial headstone.

Types Of Headstones

One of the first things that may affect the speed of completion of your memorial is the type of headstone you want to create for your recently lost loved one. Some of the significant kinds of monuments include:

• Granite Marker: A granite cemetery marker is a relatively affordable and quicker way of honoring your loved one while still looking good
• Flat Headstone: A flat headstone comes in almost the same size as the marker – instead of having a bronze plate, it’s entirely made of stone and is laser or hand etched
• Upright Headstone: An upright headstone is a commonly used headstone in most cemeteries – it doesn’t take long to make one as most of the granite upright headstones come as already precut
• Kerber Headstone: A Kerber headstone can take as long as a whole year time to be manufactured – this is because it’s the full-body length and requires the use of more stone than the other types
• Monument: Producing a monument can take several months depending on the type, size, and material of stone – it’s best to plan ahead of time if you’re thinking about having a monument

What You Want To Write On Your Headstone

The next thing that affects the time required to make a monument is what you want to have written on your headstone, including inscriptions, letterings, images, and fonts. This will help decide the total size of a memorial stone to be used and whether it can be done on an already cut stone or a new one.

For smaller inscriptions and letterings, a small-sized precut stone can be used, and in that case, your headstone will be ready within a month. However, if you prefer to use more extensive inscriptions and hand-cut images, the process of a headstone completion can take up to a few months.

You can also choose to have engravings on your headstone – there are usually plenty of custom designs and stock options available with most monument makers. The stock options are more comfortable and faster to implement, while custom designs can take considerably longer to complete and may be made by hand.

Hand-Etched Vs. Laser-Etched

The laser-etching process takes a considerably less amount of time than hand-etching when producing a headstone due to increased automation. The amount of time taken to complete laser engraving comes down to the monument builders’ availability and schedule.

The hand-etching process requires a significant amount of physical effort while making a headstone and can take up to weeks to complete. It can further increase the time needed to complete a memorial stone with the hand-engraving technique if you want to have a particular design or image engraved on your next headstone.

Choosing A Headstone Material

Granite is one of the most commonly available types of headstone materials and is a lot quicker to work on as compared to other materials. Granite is well-known for its enhanced aesthetics, durability, versatility, and lack of maintenance.

Bronze is another material that you can choose to make a headstone, which is also well-known for increased customization, resilience, timeliness, and less need for maintenance.

Summit Memorials takes immense pride in assisting you to honor the memory of your lost loved ones with the most elegant and durable granite memorial headstones across Alberta and Saskatchewan. Visit our website to see the range of granite monuments we make or contact us now for personalized service.