Putting our hands on the heart of the matter.

If a person puts his or her hand on their heart and begins to say something you can be pretty sure that what they are about to say is the absolute truth. There are many truths referring to dry stone walls. Wallers may disagree about some of these truths or 'rules of walling' but there is one rule that is pretty much an absolute must – 'A dry stone wall needs to be properly hearted, which requires that there be enough small sharp shaped small pieces so as not to skimp on the filling and pinning of the stones throughout the inside of the wall'.

What do we mean by enough? I would guess that a normal dry stone wall requires that almost a third of the amount of stone used to build it be this small hearting material, being no bigger than small lemons ( and most of it being even smaller) and their optimal shapes being that of lemon wedges.

To find this much small stone is very labour intensive and almost impossible. It's easy to fill a wheel barrow with five medium size stones and it doesn't take any time at all, but to try to fill that same wheel barrow with very small wedge shaped pieces might take over an hour. This is often the problem when gathering material to build a wall – the heart isn't in it.

A wall, if it did have hands and had an opportunity to be truthful would likely put its hands on its hearting, if it had some, and say I am an honest wall because I have been hearted right, and I will stand the test of time. That would be the truth. A wall without much hearting will be an untruthful wall and will probably not stand for much.

I always make sure people have enough of this right type of small hearting material always available in a location near them when they are working . To try to use lots of round stones won't work, even if they are small. The stones act like marbles between the bigger stones causing the wall to eventually slip apart. To try to build without much hearting too, just making do, is often the temptation. I have even seen certified testing where there wasn't enough hearting available for the wallers to build a proper wall. This is not right.

For most of our projects then, over the last ten years the only solution we could come up with for our walls was to have one or two guys making hearting all day by breaking some larger odd shaped rocks up, in order to supplement the inadequate amount of small stones that usually come with a normal tandem truck load of random building stones. There is even a technique on how to hammer rocks so as to make 'good hearting', but that is for another blog post.

Quarries in Ontario, almost without exception, don't seem to specifically make any 3 to 4 inch clear material ('railroad ballast' is the best description for what it is we tell them we would like) which is what we always need for walling. They usually just supply smaller gravel material, or a 3 inch minus material, which means it is filled with tiny stones and dust and 'fines' as well.

But recently we have come up with a source for a very reasonably priced, perfectly suitable, quarried, 'hearting material'. It's really great stuff and makes the wall building go so much better. We now have several tons of it brought to every dry stone wall project and that way we free up all the wallers on the job to be just be building and of course doing it 'with all their hearting'. If DSWAC members want to know where they can get this material from, just email us for the information.

Sgt. Cyrus' Achy Breaky Lonely Hearts Club - Disbanded

One has to wonder about one hit wonders. As a waller, the idea of not being able to consistently repeat what you do successfully and to the same high standard as you achieved on previous walls is unacceptable. Not just the walls themselves, but each stone has to be skillfully fitted and placed with the full knowledge that you will be needing to place each consecutive stone next to or on top of the one beside it, over and over again, correctly and efficiently. You are always planning ahead. It would be wrong to describe any aspect of it as being a one shot deal. The entire process is about continuity.

The idea of people getting together to build a really cool dry stone wall is not that different from what's involved in being in a rock group. A wall, like a song, is both the final product and process. It is an event which a number of people can choose to be involved in ( making it and/or being present when it is created ) and then afterward it 'exists' in its completed form, for people to repeatedly appreciate after the fact. What makes a song a hit or a success should have a lot to do with talent and artistic content. A wall is no different. It may not be judged or appreciated on the massive scale that a rock tune might be, but there is just as much need for it to be good and be able to stand the test of time. And you should be able to do it again.

When a performer or a waller can not be consistent in their quality or their output, it may be convenient for them to say that it's just part of the ups and downs of the 'rock' industry. Maybe their agents didn't 'handle' them right. Maybe their apparent success happened too soon and they were expected to produce new 'rock compositions' too fast. Maybe they tried to force or 'concrete' the elements of their style rather than let their structure develop and fit in with the musical landscape around them. Maybe they were looking to be making more and more 'hits' when they should have let the love of rock lead them to see where they naturally fit in.

Today's one hit wonder is 'Achy Breaky Heart'. It was a 'smash' hit. It got people excited, and it was fun to think it was building up to something, but it was a bust. Nothing really came of it, or rather 'after' it. Billy Ray Cirus must have 'hit a wall', so to speak. Sure, he had a few creative spurts before and afterwards but ultimately he seemed to have put himself between a rock and a hard place. I saw him perform this song at a concert a long time ago with what seemed like a million other people. It took place at the Sky Dome in Toronto which was never really a successful music venue to begin with. The acoustics were terrible, and I remember the giant roof started to roll back as he tried very hard to keep going and give it his best. Many of us were 'waiting' for him to perform this his number one country rock piece. He served it up (for all us waiters ) on a tray. But the crowd called out for more, as the ceiling flew away.... No no, wait a minute, that's a whole different 'one hit wonder' !

I left my 'hearting' in San Francisco

Today John Scott, who teaches masonry of Algonquin College in Perth Ontario, and I, taught the first day of a wonderful weekend dry stone wall workshop in Redwood City California for Lyngso Stone Supplies. The weather which was predicted to be cold and wet turned out to be warm and sunny. The 14 students were eager and appreciative of all that we shared with them about how to stack stones one upon the other. It seems wrong to come all the way from Canada to show Californians how to do anything weird and crazy, but oh well, here we are, and that's what we are doing.

The stones are a blasted polygonal rhyolite called Windsor Wall Stone and while it is a local stone and fairly inexpensive it is very challenging stone to work with. We are mixing it with a stone from Colorado that Lyngso supplies called Chief Rock which is chunkier and good for building the cheek ends.

I recognized this grey stone material as the stone that we used to build the arch with at the San Francisco Garden show last year. Lyngso supplied all the stone for the Mariposa Gardening dry stone display which we had the pleasure of helping design and build.

As well as the Chief Rock and the Windsor Wall Stone we needed lots and lots of hearting material for our dry stone wall workshop today. Amazingly Vic, the sales manager, was able to come up with three large crates of the stuff, which he had actually been saving. It was beautiful. Right there in the three boxes were all the right sizes and shapes and small sharp reddish shards we would be able to use for pinning and shimming the larger stones in the dry stone wall we were building.

I thought to myself how unusual it was for a stone supply company to be able to provide this very specific finely broken up material which is really only used for walling purposes. Suddenly I recognized what the stuff was. It was the very same peices of red Colorado sandstone I had broken up to use for in-fill at the San Francisco Garden Show wall display we built. I thought to myself how neat it was that I was actually able to re-use the 'hearting' I left in San Francisco.

The bucket: the waller's hand bag.

The waller's tool bag or tool box is often just a bucket. We can carry it out to the field and empty the tools out, if necessary, and then use it for a container for 'hearting' as well. I have seen some pretty fancy tool bags and seen some pretty beat up ones as well. We masons tend to be tough on things. But a simple plastic 5 gallon bucket isnt very expensive and can be easily replaced. A lot of small stones can be brought to the wall at one time, instead of picking them up individually, tossing them near the wall, and looking for, and collecting them again. The waller who comes to work without a bucket or two has forgotten his most useful tool.
The hands do the carrying. It is called hand-balming. This is a pretty simple concept but still worth thinking about.
There have been some pretty humble professions throughout history that involve mostly carrying things.
I think about the people who go back and forth from the fields carrying produce, or those who bring water back from a river or a hand dug well, or those who lug stone material back from the quarries or move rocks by hand from the fields they are clearing. I think about how they came up with different ways to carry things and different things to carry them in. And how their hands got tired and they would stop and switch hands. I think about the people who depended on them to carry things day after day. It was a noble and meaningful occupation for anyone with a good back and strong hands, or so it seemed.
Our hands don't carry things much any more. It's not smart. We have nap sacks, suitcases and hockey bags on wheels, golf carts, shopping carts, motorized vehicles, as well as water pipes to provide water, gas lines to provide heating, snowmobiles trucks and ATVs to transport supplies, and any number of gadgets to save us lifting or carrying just about anything.
The hands presumably now have a lot of time to do other things. But I still like to carry stuff when I can. I often don't re-park my truck but carry my tools the extra distance.
Maybe that's why I like walling so much. It's silly really. Maybe I do it just to make sure my hands don't get out of practice carrying things. Or perhaps my hands can't come up with any better ways to be 'handier'.