A gathering of stone enthusiasts.

About 300 people came to see what was happening here on Fish Rock road yesterday

Some of the finished structures (and the ongoing projects) that were open for public view were ...

The black granite tower foundation

The Irish dry stone wall

The Wing Wall

The Travertine bridge

The Ellis Island (giving a home to all the left over stones) wall

The Ideal Quarry stone cutting demo

The Roman Arch

The glowing onyx and shell jellyfish

and many many more interesting stone and tile installations.

The uneven walls of the imagination

Poet Danny Sheeny sees an Irish dry stone wall and it "sets the uneven wheel of the imagination turning in (his) mind"

I see these uneven walls as visual metaphors of the imagination.

On the threshold

This giant slab of 6 inch granite from Academy Quarry in Fresno has been feather and wedged by Nick and Karl to become the threshold for the tower.

The threshold piece is sawn in narrow strips and then chiselled down to the right thickness. 

Treading Hard.

Julian Carmellino is grinding and tooling what ail end up being the newel post of the spiral staircase when the stair treads are all fit into the tower.

There will be 24 all together

Here's how they will fit.

Julian, Matt Driscol, Karl Kaufmann and Nick Tomlins all worked amazingly hard on these granite treads.

The Tower Begins

Photo by Matt Driscol

The spiral staircase

The spiral staircase treads are now being made.

Photo and video by Nick Tomlins

Shaping Stone

Matt Driscol is shaping dimensional granite yesterday with a three inch tracer. Several of us will be shaping stones again all day today.  

We are making the curved foundation stones for a small round tower, based on a fairly typical traditional Irish design. There are plenty of stones to shape before they are laid in place using a hot lime mortar. My preference was to make the tower 'dry laid' but I was outvoted by Kyle and Patrick. 

Photo and video by Nick Tomkins 

Rocky VII

The rocks are all jumping to get going.

And we are all pumped 

and ready to build a knockout project with them.

Round One begins tomorrow.


Video by Nick Tomkins 

Correction

Hello John, I hope you are well. Someone brought one of your blog entries to my attention, and I thought it deserved a comment. 

There is no limestone in this project. What you are calling limestone is a banded granitic gneiss from the Huntsville area. It is a metamorphic stone with mineral content similar to granite, but has had its crystals rearranged so as to allow splitting on fairly parallel “beds” that resemble sedimentary bedding planes. An easy mistake to make, but if you look closely, I think you will see that it is not limestone. 

The material is often marketed as “Muskoka Granite”. You can google it by that name on the interweb and read all about it. It usually shows more colour than here. I will try to find a better picture for you.

The boulders were found on site. Some of them are granite as you point out (e.g. the pinkish one just right of centre), and there are various other kinds of glacial debris. We split them up and worked them in as we went along (“waste not - want not” you know).

Otherwise your piece raises interesting issues that are bound to inspire discussion. I’ll save my own further remarks until we can sit down with a couple of pints -- something to look forward to.

I tried several times to submit a response on your blog, but I’m not that tech-savvy – couldn’t make it work. I hope you will post this as a clarification in order to avoid widespread misunderstanding.

Awfully nice of you to mention a project of mine John; thank you very much and all the best in 2015. Augustus Butterfield.

Twelve Tonne Composition

Drawing thinking and playing with my hands.

1 - 0 for the wall.

A  professional waller builds this beautiful curved 'showcase' dry scone feature out of a difficult type of randomly shaped Dolomite whinstone from the quarry down the street. 

It is only up for a few years and you'll never guess what happens next.  

A speeding car comes barreling around the corner trying to overtake a quarry truck and smashes head on into the wall ! 

The wall takes a knock but the car is somewhat more damaged .

The score?    1 - 0   for the wall.

I can't say 'I never meta structure I didn't like'

He is asked by the new homeowner if something can be built in the back yard  'nicer' than the crudely stacked fire pit marooned in the middle of the lawn. 

You'll never guess what the boss and his crew create for their client with just some local boulders, some flat granite and a little bit of back-breaking labour....

Upcoming Stone Event

Anne Halliday and her Bridge

Anne Halliday grew up in rural Scotland on a farm near Dumfries and Galloway where there are "beautiful dykes of every shape, size and stone". 

Walling (or drystane dyking as the Scots call it) was something she says she remembers always being around. However Anne says it wasn't until her adult life that she realised that it was something she really wanted to do.

"I am attracted to the artisan nature of walling and building with dry stone.  Using something unadulterated and straight from the earth to create something beautiful, creative, practical and eternal is incredibly compelling for me." 

"I think creating and building things is good for the soul. It's good for mine anyway ! "

Anne belongs to the West of Scotland Dry Stone Walling Association

In August 2014 Anne passed her Dry Stone Walling Level 2 Test

This summer she spent two weeks building a boundary wall near Castle Douglas, Threave Castle is a commanding stone ruins not far from where she grew up. She says upon reflection " It's no wonder that I feel so drawn to the craft! "

About a year ago she decided she wanted to build a bridge.

She went about learning the process and figuring out how to best go about it.
She then sourced out some beautiful local sandstone and spoke to the Westwood Hotel Golf and Country Club a large local establishment who said they were interested in it being located at their 18th hole.

Anne wrote to sum up by saying  "Once that was all sorted out,  it was then time to begin"!!

It looks like she has indeed 'begun', and is doing a splendid job !

Anne's father came by recently to help out on the bridge for a day . 

Anne can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/drystonewaller

I hope to post photos of the finished bridge when Anne has completed the project.

Well Lit Sign On A Snowy Hill

Last Tuesday, on one of the coldest nights of the year, I drove by the looming dry stone sign that Eric Landman and friends built two years ago for his town. This commanding entrance gate to Grand Valley Ontario is situated on a prominent hill as you approach the town from the west and it is stunningly lit !

Andre, Evan, Akira and I were shown this wall feature not long after Eric completed it. Congrats to Eric (and his crew Ryan Stananought and Sean Donnelly) and to Whispering Pines.

Plantings make the stonework come alive

Thanks to Shelagh Lippay for her flora renderings of the garden wall we built, the photo of which I posted last Monday. 

Patrick Callon

Using age old techniques and waste material

A recent article in the London Free Press

'Several years ago, local landscape designer Patrick Callon was impressed and intrigued by dry stone wall builders at Canada Blooms, Canada’s largest horticultural exhibition in Toronto. The kilt-clad crew attracted a crowd as they used age-old techniques to erect a dry stone wall — a stone without any mortar between the stones — during the few days of the show.


“I discovered dry stone and met John Shaw-Rimmington,” said Callon, who has been in business for 32 years. “He was a mentor to many young Canadians who got into dry stone construction. He’s a quirky artist who influenced a lot.”

Callon was drawn to the stone.

“The material spoke to you. It wasn’t forced so much. The more I took courses, I realized if you’re on the track of environmental sensitivity, it was a fairly raw product. It’s also waste material, not the select material.”

Coming from the land, dry stone walls blend right in.


“A stone wall gives you peace. Every time you look at it, you see something different. It’s never the same canvas.”


That look appeals to people who crave an artisanal style….'

Gate Entrance Way

This is a unique dry stone gate entrance project we finally completed on the last few days of 2014. ( The weather was kind.)

It incorporates a half circle raised garden planter.This is how it might look with soil in it before it is planted and after the snow is gone 

This is a sketchup view I drew of how the two gates are positioned relative to the driveway.

I've asked garden designer Shelagh Lippay to render a visualization of how she might plant these two garden areas to compliment the stone gate features that we built.

Tomorrow I'll post her design.

Wanted - Masons

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/audioslideshow/2010/mar/05/stonemason-cwo-chichester

A Roman stone mason would have precious little to learn from his 21st century British counterpart, providing of course he could find one. Stone masonry has been in free fall for over a century already. And these days, despite having more than 6 million pre First World War buildings to maintain, Britain suffers from a chronic shortage of skilled masons.

The Enchanted Wall

I see through my iPhone. The dry stone wall I have discovered on my walk, its various fits and patterns, its structure and composition, its subtleties - all of this, I say in my hurry, will reveal itself to me later, when I study the photo.  

And when I look at the image later, I do appreciate many of the wall's qualities.  

But wait !  What was that ? 
I think I just saw something moving over there by the trees ! 

My iPhone may have captured a 'wall', and I may have 'tamed' that wall later, with my analysis of how it's built, and I might even think I know why it looks so 'good', and yet…

The real wall ( the 'enchanted' wall ) has mysteriously disappeared through the cracks. 

Another year falls away.