Trying their hand at different things.

A keen bunch of students gathered last weekend to take a hands-on course which involved dry-stacking natural stones to form free-standing walls. They successfully created this circular dry stone 'planter' along with a curved garden wall with stiles and a narrow gate opening. A lovely interior space was formed which produces a surprising 'sense of place' between the wall and the planter. Another straight wall was also completed with standardized vertical copes, through-stones, and cheek-ends.

Thus a compromise was reached where students got to learn the basics, but got to try their hand at being a little creative too. (which is something Californians love to do)

The wall will remain standing in Redwood City, California until it is taken down next year.

Hearting in San Francisco

Last week John Scott, who teaches masonry of Algonquin College in Perth Ontario, and I, came back and taught our second two-day dry stone wall seminar in Redwood City California for Lyngso Stone Supplies. The weather, amazingly warm and sunny for this time of year was quite a contrast to what everyone has been experienceing back east. The 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 were again, and that's what we were doing.

This time the stones are a lovely lichen covered reddish sandstone from Arizona called Moss Back and a whitish quartzite material from near Champlain NY.

Again, because we were building dry stone walls we needed lots and lots of hearting material. It acts like the cement. Happily, instead of having to labouriously explain what we needed and scramble to find something suitable, we discovered that there were already two large metal crates of the stuff available on site. Last year's workshop wall had been carefully dismantled and all the small material had been collected separately and saved. It was 'lovely' stuff for hearting. Right there in the two boxes were all the right tiny sizes and shapes we would need again for pinning and shimming the larger stones in the new dry stone wall the students would be constructing

I thought again how clever it was for Lyngso to be able to save and provide this very specific, very useless looking material, which is probably only good for walling purposes. Not only was the golden sun shining all that weekend (even though this is the rainy season) but the very 'hearting' I left in San Francisco last time was waiting to be used again.

Thoroughly Enjoyable

DSWA mastercraftsman Norman Haddow and I co-taught a two day course in Brockport NY together on Saturday and Sunday.The weather was great. We built 32 feet of traditional dry stone wall with eleven enthusiastic students. Norman wasn't sure we would finish it on time but we actually completed the wall, including the proper vertical copes, in enough time to clean up the site and re-stack five pallets of left over stone.

At one point yesterday when things were getting a bit hectic Norman said to me " We need to take some time to gather our thoughts and our throughs."

The two words are closer in spelling than in pronounciation, but we both got the spontaneous pun and laughed.

Here we are with all the students pretending to put on all the thoughs at the same time.

The throughs turned out to be lovely massive stones that stuck well out from the wall on both sides , and which Kathy, the kind lady who runs Sarah's Garden Center, will be able to place plants on and display flowers. The whole weekend was a great success. Everyone in the class said they had a 'thoroughly' enjoyable time.

Many Hands Make Light Of Any Differences We Have.

Building stone walls, fireplaces, arches and bridges with many hands is not just lighter and faster work but also very educational. There are representatives here at our Canadian Rocktoberfest from 5 different countries - wallers all bringing their expertise to the four Thanksgiving Festival dry stone projects to create a melting pot of knowledge and ideas.

Here in the picture masons Steve Hodges,Gavin Rose,Michael Weitzner,Patrick McAfee,Charley MacMartin,Menno Braam,Andre Lemieux and I stand around the configuration of voussoirs we have spent the day shaping and fitting on the flat area near the bridge so they can be placed onto the bridge form tomorrow. Patrick's idea of preparing the voussoirs beforehand to one side of the bridge was brilliant. It enabled a lot more accurate pre-fitting and shaping with a lot more of the volunteer wallers participating so that when we move them all over to the bridge and fit them together onto the form tomorrow the actual building of the barrel arch will take very little time at all.

These sharing of ideas and better ways of doing things is what it's all about at these festivals. It's not just the new friendships and getting together in the evening with old friends and wallers from other countries and past events, but also the learning to 'give and take' with each other, and work together as a team, which turns out to be just as important an element of what we are doing . The bridge I envisioned for Landon Bay has become a better structure because of the input of those who have graciously come to add their time and experience to the project, and added valuable input as to how the process of building the bridge can be improved.

Same too with the hiking trail arch and the dry stone fireplace and the way we have organized the two day DSWA training sessions (for the 28 students from all over North America attending tomorrow's workshops ) which will be taught today by Ireland's Patrick McAfee, Scotland's Norman Haddow and the State's Michael Weitzner.

Tomorrow I hope to post pictures of all these projects and spotlight some of the many wallers from all over North America and Britain who have gathered here in Rockport this weekend for what is turning out to be the best dry stone walling festival ever held in Canada.

Triumphant Hands

Completed Willowbank Raised Garden Wall

Above is what the raised flower garden looked like at 8:00 am on friday morning. I had taken the Thursday morning to do a thorough instruction on dry stone walling techniques to the nine students who were taking the historic restoration course at the prestigious Willowbank School of Restoration Arts on the Niagara Parkway in Queenston Ontario, and then the whole afternoon working with them to dismantle the slumping circular stone retaining wall that was to be our 'repair project' for this year's two-day hands-on workshop. This dry laid terrace garden at the Niagara Horticultural School in the Botanical Gardens, just south of the Butterfly Atrium, had been 'rebuilt' only sixteen years ago by professionals, but was now looking pretty sad.

It was unbearably hot for September here in Ontario, but everybody plugged away on the Friday at it and somehow we managed to complete the new wall by four that afternoon. Sixty linear feet (two feet thick) of carefully laid reclaimed limestone later,( and lots of blisters and aching backs to prove it) we had just enough energy left after rebuilding this raised garden wall and cleaning up the site, to raise our hands in triumph and say, 'hey, look what we did.'

A Hand for the Arch

Stone carver and friend Colleen Wilson dropped by and took a short video clip of the last part of our dry stone workshop in Metchosin B.C. last Saturday. The two day hands-on course was attended by 12 enthusiastic students (4 women 8 men) with Chris Barclay and myself doing the instructing.

I thought it was an interesting enough clip (showing the removal of the centering) to merit a 'stand-alone' posting on the blog. Normally (and probably this is for the same reason magicians don't like to reveal how they do their tricks) I don't like to show pics of an arch in progress showing the actual form still in place, but this clip captured a lot of the excitement of these workshop 'arch-removal' moments and particularly because this form remained suspended in the opening even after the supports were taken away, and was evidently in no hurry to leave.

Coverbands or coping hands

While the proposal to do traditional vertical coping ( still fairly uncommon in Canada) was not turned down by those involved in the organizing this project, it was decided in the end to go with flat coping rather than vertical coping based on the small amount of material we had left.

After three days and fun and lots of lifting, shaping, fitting and socializing - the memorial 45 foot long curved dry stone wall at the Knox Church in Dunedin was completed. This nonprofit event ended mid-afternoon with everyone pitching in to clean up the site for pictures and Sunday's morning meeting. There were some informal speeches and then goodbyes to the dozen or so people who gave three days of their time towards this garden project organized by Anna Hobbs in remembrance of late husband Bill.

Thanks to all the student wallers, Anna, Byron, Bruce B , Bruce D,Wayne, Arturo, Jill, Heather, Eric, Earl, Bob, Chuck, Bryan, Ben and the various visitors who helped out each day. Local waller and DSWAC member Mark Lewis and his assistant Marion dropped by to see what was going on, as well as students from the 'Healing Wheel Wall' workshop in Orangeville Ontario and several other wallers from the area all came to cheer us on.

The boulders we used at the cheekends were donated by Scott Winters who has a gravel quarry not far from Creemore. Again thanks to Credit Valley Quarries who generously provided walling material at a very reasonable price. We hope to come back next year and build a dry stone arch entranceway between the two walls we constructed this week..