Grasping the obvious.

Third day of the StoneFest at Marenakos. The sides to the beehive hut are steadily going up under the careful supervision of Patrick McAfee. The 8 large rectangular stones form the canted sides of four crude window openings. Also note the batter is starting to go in faster to form the signature curve of the Irish clochan.

It is interesting to compare the 'noise' level in this video compared to the previous posting where there are no machines running.

It always amazes me how dependent stonemasons have become on large machinery. This powerful mechanical 'hand' does the job of 8 men lifting these stones into place. Unfortunately there are those of us who didn't come here to watch heavy machinery move stones. Most of us see that every day in our working environment. What many of us came to see and experience was a transfer of knowledge, including a passing down of an inheritance of stone moving skills different to those used on every job site today.

Im just saying.

The sound of hand tools.

We continued building a beehive Clochán Tuesday September 14 at the Marenakos StoneFest near Seattle Washington. Participants worked enthusiastically together adding height and thickness to the dry laid circular structure to the point around 4 pm where there was enough height to begin the corbelling of the roof. Various tasks were shared such as pinning, fitting, building, shaping stones and making hearting. Hear is a short clip of what it looks and sounds like when people get together to build traditional structures of stone in the traditional way - with their hands. "Yeah!"