Niches

I built three niches yesterday in the chamber. They sort of designed themselves according to the available stones I could find.  They give a pleasing contrast to the more primitive chunkiness of the rest of the structure so far.  The niches will be places to put candles or maybe to hold glasses and bottles of wine. For now I store my chisel and hammer there when I'm not using them.

Dan asked about tea and coffee breaks. Yes we take lots. Here is the view we have when we take our breaks. It is a fantastic view of hills, trees, walls and sheep in every direction. I like walling in Lancashire.  I think I've found my niche.

That's the gypsy caravan we sit in on our rainy breaks. Yesterday was sunny. 

How we get those big boulders up.

Norman has found a big chunk of limestone bedrock that he wants to use near the upper right side of the chamber.

( We've used some huge stones in this project ! )

After we bring it down the ramp on the dolly, I 'fridge-walk' it over to the scaffolding plank

Then tip it on to the plank

Tumble it up plank. ( careful not to let it drop suddenly and break the plank )

Roll it again

Oh, you're watching ?

Repositioning so that the boulder will roll into place the right way up.

Here comes the big push-pull

Pivot it on the board end.

One final twist.

I lift and Norman removes the board

Then snug it up to the left side of the big cornerstone.

Perfect fit. Voila!

Professional Snobbery?

It seems that the word has come to us from the Scottish operative masonry of long ago. In Scotland, the word "cowan" denoted "Dry-dyker" -a man who built walls of stones held in position by their own weight and not by mortar. As he did not use mortar or prepared stones in his trade, he was looked upon as an inferior type of artisan by the operative mason, and as such was denied admittance to a mason's "Lodge". Which in those days probably meant a group of operative masons engaged in some building project. So conscious were the operative masons of the need to keep cowans out. That the early Tyler's--who, as their name suggests, were those who placed roofing tiles in position after the masons had completed the walls and the carpenters the rafters-from their lofty perch on the roof were charged with the additional task of reporting the imminent approach of cowans. This, presumably, was intended to give the masons time to band together to keep off the "cowans and intruders".

This was pure snobbery--the cowan was probably just as skilled as the mason. Nevertheless the distinction persisted, for the records of operative masons dated 1460 speak of cowans, while it was not until 1688 that there is any record of a cowan being admitted a member of a Masons fraternity. John Syme "an honest old man and a cowaner" was admitted to the Cannongate Lodge in that year. Over 100 years later a stone-dyker was admitted as an Entered Apprentice in the Stonehaven Lodge, which consisted of "operative masons, speculative Masons and one cowan"

Over the years the word "cowan" seems to have undergone a change when used by our ancient brethren the operatives. Instead of referring only to "dry-dykers" it came to include:

(1) those who had never served an apprenticeship to the mason trade

(2) those who had not completed an apprenticeship

It would appear that operative masons, jealous of their skill and status, had far more reasons to exclude such persons as those described in (I) and (2) than the true cowan. Finally, what has spectulative Masonry made of the cowan.

In the early 1700's there are records showing that the early speculatives were, if anything more bitterly opposed to the admission of cowans than even the operatives had been. As early as 1738 the "Constitutions" laid down that "no free and accepted Mason shall work with, be employed by, or teach his trade to a cowan

So it appears that speculative Masonry has dealt more harshly with the cowan than ever operative masons did-­he old operatives may have excluded him because of his lack of skill and training but at least they did not use the word as we do. We could, with justice apply it to anyone not a Freemason, but we are on much more uncertain ground when we use it as a term of reproach

C Dalby in The New South Austialian Freemason. 1970




www.masoniclibrary.org

Apple Store

This is the design of what we are looking to build in the next month.

It is like a root cellar, but for storing apples.

Because it's underground, and the dry stone vaulted chamber will be buried it will be hard to take photos of the actual structure

Measuring how wet it is

Norman has a policy of working in the wet weather as long as when he's driving to the site the wipers don't have to be turned on past medium speed.

Don't know what the wiper speed would have been after we got to the site some days, but last week in Lancashire we worked in a lot of rain ...

...which made for a lot of mud too.

( I might have to ditch the crocks! )

Progress So Far

Wednesday

Friday

Moving Big Bedrocks

This video shows a primitive way to get big stones moved to where you need them if you don't have heavy machinery or you prefer not to go to the gym to get your exercise .

The big chunk of bedrock we were moving is seen here in its final position in the hole.

Holes near Blackburn Lancashire

Now I'm in Lancashire England for a while starting a very interesting project. Norman Haddow and I will be working together on a hilly farm property walling amidst that island of trees that you can see off in the distance in the photo above.

This is the giant hole that has been dug in order for us to begin building

So for now, until we fill it with our mystery dry stone structure, there remains one more hole near Blackburn Lancashire than the ten thousand that John Lennon sang about back in the 60's.

Day Five - Unity Gate

We decided on the name Unity Gate. The connection being the connection between all of us as we seamlessly worked but actually played and enjoyed ourselves as one, building the arched swirly-walled sculpture at the Haliburton School of the Arts last week.

The vertical stones in the curved wall sections 'locked in' making the whole installation tighter and tighter with each thin stone we added. The final special shim was fitted to complete the final structure.

After a magnificent cleanup effort by the entire crew it was picture taking time.

Thanks to all the students who worked as a team on this project - Lorrie, Larry, Matt, Drew, Patricia, Cindy, Tony, Bruce, George, Tom, Andrew, Maureen, John, Marc, Trevor and Cheryl 

Day Four

Thursday afternoon, day four of the Haliburton Dryscaping Workshop, a crowd gathered to watch the form come out. We would add more stones for weight to the top of the arch on Friday

It had been a very productive day, but a very exhausting one.The project was now back on schedule.

The two curved, vertical-stacked walls were now coming along fine and looked like they would be completed by Friday on time too.

Day 3

Wednesday was a 'wet and dry' stone walling day.

Andrew and Matt split many of the bigger stones into smaller slabs..

A third truck brought more big rocks, some valuable hearting material and mud

George and Tom carried quite a few two-man stones from the pile to build up the arch 

By the end of Wednesday my crew of enthusiastic students had made sense of the bulk of the 40 tons of random quarried material available to us in the H S A parking lot.

The Design

This is the design I proposed for the Haliburton School of Art dryscaping workshop.

Day Two

The pile of rocks that greeted me in the school parking lot on the Sunday before the course didn't have many chunks smaller than a large microwave in it.

There had been a mix up with the delivery of the first two loads of stone apparently. I had specifically asked for 24 tons of random stone with sizes nothing bigger  than a microwave. 

Day two of the Haliburton week-long Dryscaping Workshop involved, among other things, a trip to a local quarry to gather a lot of smaller building material for us to mix in with the bulky over sized rocks we would be having to work with. 

Thankfully all the students said they really enjoyed the opportunity to visit a quarry. Presumably they got a feel for what dry stone material looks like in its native habitat.

Learning how to break and split the big rocks was a useful skill to learn too

All Hands On Rock.

I'm teaching a five day course at the Haliburton School of Art  all this week. There is a huge pile of big rocks that we have to move. I have sixteen enthusiastic students.  I need them all !

Kingsmere Walling Workshop - Part 5

John Redicon and Gillian Kennedy infiltrate the string lines to place and secure the hearting. Unlike a mortared wall, the stones in a dry stone wall are independent and not stuck together.  However, no stone  or rock (including the small hearting material) should wiggle after it has been fitted in the wall. Each rock is held tight by its neighbour. It's called a 'rock' but it's not supposed to.

John attended the Hanover event last September and took the walling course taught by Tracey Blackwell. He told me at the end of the Kingsmere course that he thoroughly enjoyed the challenge that this particular workshop presented. 

He wrote later. 

"John, great weekend at Kingsmere, my first experience with 'boulder walls' and despite being a lot of work, for us 'old folk' the result of the weekend's work was very satisfying. Very good bunch of people to work with and the weather almost cooperated.

Thanks for all of the guidance I learned a lot."

Kingsmere Walling Workshop - Part 4

We will be doing another workshop July 2014

Kingsmere Walling Workshop - Part 3

This wall was completed by 4 pm on Sunday. It didn't take the students long to catch on to building with round stones laying them in courses. It is no more difficult to do than random laid stonework. However as you work to the string line for each course, it is important not to let the height of individual stones vary too much from the line.

Happy wallers on a pretty straight forward walling course!

Kingsmere Walling Workshop - Part 2

All the material has been removed along the old rubble stone pile/wall to clear a twenty-eight foot strip where we will start to build our new wall. The base is then prepared. All this takes a good hour and a half of the first morning of the workshop. 

Then some of the bigger boulders are person-handled into place. It's difficult to make sense of it all at first. We have lots of big awkward odd shaped rocks and more than enough of the smaller round stones. But where are all the medium size good stones?

We stand in a leaning pose in anticipation of what it will look like when the wall is completed.