The Krak was built last week under the instruction of Nick Aitken, with the help of Ken and Sunny, Eric Landman, Russ Beardsley, Alan Ash to name a few.
This scaled down Krak is a complex looking structure, but when broken down into individual elements it was essentially an L shaped wall (plum on one side, 1: 2 batter on the other) with round pillars on the corners.
The part that had everyone stumped for a while was on the quoin stones, and how to get the cylindrical shape to emerge from the pyramidal shape wall. After much head scratching they managed to carve the cylindrical shape into the unforgiving Pennsylvania blue stone. This stone only wants to break perpendicular to the grain so trying to acheave a 1:2 batter into a 6" bed took up alot of time. Fortunately the guys at Marenakos guillotined the limestone blocks into pie shapes for the pillars and so sped up the process and get everyone back on track.
The builders had hoped to go higher with the towers but the lack of time and stone gave everyone an excuses to come back. All said it did make for an attractive structure. It was also great for wallers from Ireland,American and Canada to to come together to play with stones
Photos by Sunny Wieler
