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  St. Joseph Mission and Cemetery, Bertrand
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Cleaning and repair of headstones

Cleaning headstones is only necessary when a stone is really filthy and/or has things growing on it.  You do not want to clean a headstone as often as you clean your car.  Except for a simple wipe down with a dry towel, I think a good cleaning every 10 years should be enough.  You want to be very careful with headstones because once damage is done it cannot be undone.  Headstones are pieces of history and are lasting reminders of a person and must be handled with the utmost respect.  Permission should be sought from the cemetery prior to cleaning stones.  Permission should also be obtained from the family of the person whose stone you are cleaning unless you are a relation.
The equipment needed is fairly simple.  A scrub brush with natural or synthetic fibers.  It should be something soft, like the bristles on a tooth brush.  You do not want anything with rigid bristles and definitely nothing with wire bristles.  Would you use a wire brush on your car? No? Then do not use it on a tombstone, it will remove filth yet it will remove stone particles as well and can very easily ruin a stone.  Just a soft bristled nylon scrub brush is fine.  You must also never use a brush on a power drill... in fact, if you are thinking of using any power tool, please stop.
You will also want a plastic scraper or even a wooden paint stirring stick.  This is used to remove the more chunky stuff like moss, bird poo and the like.  Just lightly run the scraper across the surface of the stone where there is moss growing.  Don't use force or dig into the stone. 
Water is the most important part of the cleaning process and you will want to bring plenty with you.  A hand-pump sprayer is very useful for cleaning gravestones.  For the love of God do not use a pressure washer.
The only other item you will need is D2 biological solution.  It is a bit pricey at $50 a gallon... but a gallon will easily clean a dozen stones and will do a better job than anything else.  It is not harmful to stone unlike many household cleaners.  Do not use bleach or dish soap or anything of that nature.   One good thing about D2 is that it will continue to slowly work for weeks and will kill off any growth or bacteria growing on the stone. If you don't want to buy D2, just use water.
Begin by wetting the whole stone down.  Then, using the scraper, remove any moss or lichen growth.  Spray the stone down with water again and spray with D2.  Allow the D2 to work for 10 minutes or so and then wet down the stone again and lightly scrub with the brush.  Once again, get out that water sprayer and wash away the grime from the scrubbing.  Finally, while the stone is still wet, spray it down with the D2 a second time and leave it.  The stone will not look absolutely beautiful right away, but give the D2 a couple of weeks or a month.  The point of the washing is not to make the stone look brand new again, but to get rid of the things that are causing damage to the stone, obscuring its lettering and making the stone presentable again.

Atlas Preservation, a great place to obtain all the grave cleaning supplies you might need.

A nice video of how to properly clean a stone.
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An example of the cleaning process using D2.  The first image on the left is the "before" image.  The second image is immediately after the cleaning process.  The D2 will react with all of the foul things growing in the stone and it will turn the stone various lovely colors which will disappear over the next few days.  The third image is about a week after the cleaning.  The 4th image is about 3 weeks later. Of course, the angle of the sun shining of the stone makes a considerable difference when trying to read the stone.
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This military stone is in very good condition it is just very dirty and has things growing on it.  The 2nd photo from the left is immediately after cleaning.  The third image, taken two weeks later, still has some of the strange stain which is possibly just the remnants of some biological growth.  The 4th image is five weeks after cleaning.
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Some projects are a bit more complex.  This one was mostly buried.  This type of stone was meant to stand upright with the top 2/3 out of the ground.  Akepox 2040 is a 2 part adhesive made for repairing natural stone can be used to put the pieces back together, especially when there is a fairly clean break.  A mixture of lime mortar and marble dust can be used to fill in the cracks.
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Other stones are not mean to be put directly into the ground but would have been fitted into a mortis and tenon base.  A majority of these stones have the tenon broken away and/or the base is irreparably broken or lost and therefore a new base must be made.  The second photo shows how I pour a concrete base in the ground with a foam form to make a slot for the stone to fit into (this image is for a different stone, but is comparable).  Marble is much weaker than concrete and will very easily break off if placed directly into concrete and so I place them into a slot in the concrete with a quarter inch gap all the way around the stone which is filled with sand and a lime/sand mortar.  The pieces of the monument are put back together with Akepox and the cracks filled with a lime/marble dust mortar.
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In the spring only slight bits of marble showed through the weeds and debris.  Clearing away the topsoil revealed 4 stones, one of which was broken in half.  After spraying the stones with D2 they were ready to go into slotted bases.  By fall all were back upright.
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The first stone, that of the Lano Children was completely covered with some sort of growth and was completely illegible until cleaned, which is shown in the second photo.  The third photo, that of Mary and Edward Hayre, was broken in two, the base was leaning significantly and was dirty.  The fourth image shows it cleaned, levelled and back together
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