I travelled to Barre Vermont for the Rocknockers Rendezvous. There are six of us so far from Canada this year. Today Saturday we may see even more wallers coming in from up north. Last time I was here was to teach a workshop back in 2008 there were quite a few Canadians.We built free-standing walls that year which made up three sides to a 80 foot rectangular bocce court. After the workshop we moved some really big Barre grey granite cubes into position and just for fun I helped the students fashion a funky gothic arch with some leftover stone. I was delighted to see the arch was still looking good three years later. I was also surprised to see the arch form we used was still there sitting off in the field.
Patty Meriam, who runs the Barre Granite Museum, asked us to build another arch at this year's Stone Foundation mini symposium weekend event, to create a second entranceway to the round fire pit structure that was the focus of an exciting dry stone wall competition Tomas Lipps organized for the 2008 symposium. Above is a photo of one of the big granite blocks that we have just split and spaced so that we can straddle it to form a gothic arch opening using the old arch form to support the stone.
We are using a lot of donated random quarried granite grout and a lot more of the left over rusty brown schisty dry stone wall material. All we need is a good sized 'keystone' now. This one (above) which is one of the new installations in the small Art Park that we visited during our lunch break in Barre, might do the trick.
Patty Meriam, who runs the Barre Granite Museum, asked us to build another arch at this year's Stone Foundation mini symposium weekend event, to create a second entranceway to the round fire pit structure that was the focus of an exciting dry stone wall competition Tomas Lipps organized for the 2008 symposium. Above is a photo of one of the big granite blocks that we have just split and spaced so that we can straddle it to form a gothic arch opening using the old arch form to support the stone.
We are using a lot of donated random quarried granite grout and a lot more of the left over rusty brown schisty dry stone wall material. All we need is a good sized 'keystone' now. This one (above) which is one of the new installations in the small Art Park that we visited during our lunch break in Barre, might do the trick.