Why curling stones are made on Ailsa Craig

Curling (Callie Jones)

The ancient sport of curling has come to the public’s notice in recent years because of the phenomenal success of the Scottish women’s curling teams in the World Curling Championships and the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Curling involves propelling a special stone by hand along the ice of a rink. The rules of the sport are complex.

Once the stone is sliding, the team whose stone it is are allowed to sweep the ice in front of the stone as it travels.

Curling, which is an excellent spectator sport, received good television coverage and became justifiably popular during the championships and the Olympics.

The renewed interest in curling has given a boost to a somewhat unusual industry, the manufacture of curling stones.

As far as Merlin knows, the only manufacturer in the UK is Kays, a small family-owned company in Scotland. In 1851 William Kay began to make curling stones from the fine-grained granite found on the island of Ailsa Craig. This island, in the Firth of Clyde, is the plug of a long-extinct volcano.

The island provides several varieties of granite suitable for making curling stones. The main body of the stone, particularly the striking band which hits stones from the rival team, must be of a resilient type of granite. Ailsa Craig’s common green granite is ideal for this.

Under the stone is a running edge, the ailsert, made usually of Ailsa Craig blue hone granite. This is inserted into the main body of the stone by a patented process.

In the summer of 2001, Kays was permitted to harvest some 1,500 tons of Ailsa Craig granite. Only fallen boulders were taken and no blasting was involved, and so the island’s many seabirds were not disturbed. Kays now has sufficient material to manufacture curling stones for many years to come.