Putting a handy 'spin' on it.

Jacky, the young bilingual park employee assigned to our DSWAC walling demonstration near Ottawa last weekend, was excited to gain any more information we could tell him about the historic walls in Kingsmere Park and about the merits of dry stone walls in general. He came dressed in authentic period farmer clothes, complete with pitch fork and straw hat. After he was thoroughly briefed, he set about his task with great gusto.

He managed to get everyone's attention by greeting each person who came by saying "Hello, Bonjour" and then saying "Would you like to learn about what we are doing here?" It wasnt long before he had a continuous crowd of people standing around. He described in great detail and at great lengths what dry stone walling was and why it was so exciting to see it still being done in the park. He did a great job and sounded genuinly enthusastic .

That Sunday unlike the day before, we had a non-stop flow of specataors stopping to watch what we were doing. Jacky answered all their questions fluently in French and in English. It was stirring, even for those of us who were working on the wall, to hear about what it was we were doing. The talk got more embelished each time he gave it.

We have learned a valuable lesson. In future we will need to have at least one full time interpretor at any public dry stone walling demonstration we put on, or perhaps, we could find someone to cover what we were doing who was even more like a proffessional sports commentator. This person would not only be knowledgable about stonework but be equipped with a microphone as well, like an announcer at a demolition derby or a horse race . This person could shout and give play-by-play running commentary on how spectacularly the stones were being placed in the wall, how awkward the stones were and how strong and talented the men were who were 'participating' in this popular outdoor event.

Hand doubts.

Apparently watching a dry stone wall being built by hand is a lot less exciting than I had imagined. Case in point was the demonstration project we took on at Kingsmere Estate in Ottawa last weekend. On the first day of this special Labour Day event many of the visitors just walked by us without so much as a glance our way. The guys working with me were all as baffled as I was about this phenomena of people not finding what we do very interesting. I would have thought seeing masons chiselling and shaping big stones and skillfully fitting them into a stone wall would attract more attention than it does. However the opposite often happens. People who come by will usually glance once and then must decide that what we are doing is less interesting than watching someone cut their lawn. At Kingsmere that Saturday people must have thought we were just poor labourers who couldnt even afford to take time off for a holiday weekend. They looked like they felt sorry for us too because they would often look the other way as the walked by.

As we drove back, somewhat dejected, to Ottawa that Saturday night we tossed around various ideas as to how the whole experience could be made more rewarding. For the next day, Labour Day Sunday, we decided to take one of two tactics. We would either put out a hat, (with some of our spare change in it, as bait) and see whether people might feel sorry enough for us to be moved to toss us some spare toonies throughout the day, or better yet, we could try to find someone knowledgable enough to stand there and draw attention to what it was we were doing, like a kind of dry stone sports announcer. The organizers who were running the park event didnt think the first idea would be appropriate but said they would be willing to provide us with someone who could be a kind of commentator for the next two days, if we could explain to him what he needed to say.

To find out if we had any success in getting visitors to stop and watch craftsmen re-building historic dry stone walls, please come back tomorrow.

Fixed By Hand with the Materials At Hand.

Joe Mitchell who works with me quite often, exclaimed yesterday "Man we redo nice work!" We laughed. I noticed he posted his comment on facebook that evening.

We were doing a small repair on an installation that members of the Dry Stone Wall Association of Canada had built last year in a municipal park in Port Hope, Ontario. It was a dry stone sitting-area around an historic memorial dedicated to Joseph Scriven. A circular enclosure had been created around the monument to bring more attention to the fact that it was there, commemorating the famous hymn writer's accomplishments and the fact that he lived in Port Hope, Ontario. That we merely 'redid' a section of this very nice looking circular wall, (which had been purposely damaged the week before) made the statement 'Man we redo nice work' seem like a harmless, yet still very poignant comment. In fact, it was absolutely fitting for what we had done (or rather, redone) but the more I thought about it, the more the significance of this remark struck me.

For sure, this was not a slogan that you would want to have printed on your business cards or your truck. And I don't think we need to confuse people by telling those who ask us, that we never advertise for work, because most of it is 'repeat business' (even though apart from referrals, it's absolutely true). Our 'repeat work' of course is for clients who want us to do more nice work, not keep fixing things we've built badly, but in this case it was a good honest repair needing to be done on a vandalized section of well built wall, and it was done at no cost to the town. I wonder how many other things in the park get fixed at no cost to the town?

But I digress. The fact that a construction company comes back to fix what they do, seems like the kind of thing they wouldn't necessarily want to advertise. Most people dont want to think about, or have anything to do with the idea of something needing any maintenance. That's why municipalities love concrete.

But concrete fails too. And often it has to be redone or sawn out at great cost when there has been damage or changes needed to be made, or more often than you would think, when it has been poured in the wrong place. We built a dry stone wall next to a parking lot being built where we saw a municipal construction crew working for weeks surveying and forming and pouring concrete curbs that all had to all be painstakingly jack-hammered out afterwards and redone, because it was all built to the wrong grade specifications. When concrete has to be torn out or fixed it usually isn't what you would call redoing 'nice' work.

As we unceremoniously rebuilt the section of dry stonewall at the Scriven monument, the mayor and a council member came over and watched us. They just happened to be there to be filmed by a TV crew doing a news segment about the new playground that had been recently installed in the park. I sensed they only saw that our 'wall' needed fixing, not that it was getting repaired without delay, without any fuss or bother, without ordering in expensive replacement parts or materials, and all of this done without having to take a lot of damaged material away to the dump; which is where the old busted steel, wood and concrete from the previous playground had probably been trucked off to.

A public school playground in Ambleside, Cumbria UK

enclosed on all sides by a free-standing (easily repairable) dry stone wall.

Hands On Inspection of an Arch and Walls Without Mortarboard or Scaffolding

Akira Inman is a stone mason in Toronto who came to our Rocktober Festival in Grand Valley in 2009 , and then through having met with Thomas Lipps (who we sponsored to be there) was invited to be a translator in Ventura last January, for the Japanese stone masons who came over for the Stone Symposium in California, and were demonstrating the ancient Anoh tradition of dry stone construction.

While there, he and I worked together and I invited him to do some projects with us including the wall repairs at Balsam Lake Ontario we just recently completed. During the week he worked with us I invited him to see this arch. He hung on with his 'hands' and took a closer look at this permanent arch I had built some years ago with Cam Reed, a homeowner who wanted to help and learn too about arches. (not so that he could then go and build them all over Ontario, but just so that he could say he helped build his one)

Anyway Akira told me the arch looked pretty cool and that it probably wasnt going to fall down.

For those of you who would like to learn a bit more about arches, I include a very good description of the 'former' centering used in bridge and arch construction written (and sent to me recently) by my friend Norman Haddow (a dry stone bridge builder, and yes you'll be relieved to know, a certified master craftsman waller with the DSWA of UK)

The Former

Prior to the 20th Century, the support for a new arch was called centering. The arrangement was similar to the technology involved in the construction of a wheel. Another method used for smaller arches was to pile sand on a wooden platform to create the desired shape for the stonework above. It was quite simple then to remove the loose sand when building was complete.

Nowadays it is much more common to cut the required shape on at least two boards then to cover these with strong cross pieces or with bendable strong materials such as marine ply. It is essential that the former of whatever type is strong enough to bear the weight of not just the arch rocks but also any material which will be built on top before the former is removed. Any area of weakness can result in failure.

The support for the former should be resting on a solid base. Bricks or blocks are ideal for the support as they can be easily knocked away when required.

Care is necessary when arranging these support so that the former can safely be dropped down to allow its removal, without interfering with the stone work. I have heard of people being required to set fire to the former to remove it as it was not possible to get it out any other way!

With a half moon former it is possible and useful when placing the arch stones to mark lines on the outside to indicate the required slope of the builders and especially the risers.

When the desired arch is not a half circle, the lines should be drawn from the theoretical centre.

Caught on the way down.

Wouldnt it be nice if you could just levitate the stones up to where you need them. This one looks like it is on its way up to Joe, but it's caught in time on its way down. Most stones are on their way down. They are normally moving very slow in that direction, unless of course if you push them or throw them.

Stones like to be heavy. They like to be close to the ground. It is this quality that makes them useful. It is this consistencey that makes them stay where they are in a dry stone wall, in an arch or a cairn.

People are not always as reliable. They may change their minds on you. One day they may think that it is very cool to be given an opportunity to learn how to build challenging structures like the one above, and the next day decide that it's wrong to teach anyone else. Luckily stones are more consistent.

Stones, if fitted together properly, even though they are 'pulled' in that direction, will support each other and don't end up being in that great a rush to get to the bottom.

Learning From Old Hands.

I thought this was very interesting in terms of getting across the amount work, passion and involvement required by someone who has been given the task of instructing others.