The Waller's Song

Hire me, and you will be,

Sure to see,

Your walls will stay together

See how they look, from pics in a book,

We build em dry

That's 'dry-laid' !

Fitting even poor slate

Waiting for more stones to come

Scuffing up our T-shirts, stupid bloody

Throughstones,man

Why are there not enough

Or every face is wrong?

I'll am a 'sneck' man

Pay me a check man.

I am the Waller.

Who (else) could you choose?

This here city needs some pretty

Little walls all stacked in rows.

See, why they're dry,

Cause glues you can't disguise.

See how it runs.

It's a crime,

Not trying,

I mean 'dry stone'

To hell with all your concrete

Dripping down the sides of forms.

Brick or block that's really poor work

Let's have it all destroyed.

Why would you not agree?

Or try to stick stones down?

I am a craftsman We need more craftsmen.

We need more 'wallers'.

Who else would you choose?

Sitting in an English Garden

New brick walls look dumb.

But If the walls are dry.

They really stand and keep on

Standing, cause at least they drain.

Its not an enigma, Im not for bricks, man

I'm a stone waller

Desperate housewives choke on brochures

Do you think just photographs will do? ha ha ha ha

See how they'll smile, with walls which have style

They're more satisfied

With, 'Dry-laid'

Some of them prefer, not just walls but also towers.

Elementary feng shui, phony stone just wont do.
Man a dry stone wall keeps
Looking better every day.

They are the 'best' man - the way they're made man!
I'm for stone walling

What else would you choose?

Hands On Inspection of an Arch and Walls Without Mortarboard or Scaffolding

Akira Inman is a stone mason in Toronto who came to our Rocktober Festival in Grand Valley in 2009 , and then through having met with Thomas Lipps (who we sponsored to be there) was invited to be a translator in Ventura last January, for the Japanese stone masons who came over for the Stone Symposium in California, and were demonstrating the ancient Anoh tradition of dry stone construction.

While there, he and I worked together and I invited him to do some projects with us including the wall repairs at Balsam Lake Ontario we just recently completed. During the week he worked with us I invited him to see this arch. He hung on with his 'hands' and took a closer look at this permanent arch I had built some years ago with Cam Reed, a homeowner who wanted to help and learn too about arches. (not so that he could then go and build them all over Ontario, but just so that he could say he helped build his one)

Anyway Akira told me the arch looked pretty cool and that it probably wasnt going to fall down.

For those of you who would like to learn a bit more about arches, I include a very good description of the 'former' centering used in bridge and arch construction written (and sent to me recently) by my friend Norman Haddow (a dry stone bridge builder, and yes you'll be relieved to know, a certified master craftsman waller with the DSWA of UK)

The Former

Prior to the 20th Century, the support for a new arch was called centering. The arrangement was similar to the technology involved in the construction of a wheel. Another method used for smaller arches was to pile sand on a wooden platform to create the desired shape for the stonework above. It was quite simple then to remove the loose sand when building was complete.

Nowadays it is much more common to cut the required shape on at least two boards then to cover these with strong cross pieces or with bendable strong materials such as marine ply. It is essential that the former of whatever type is strong enough to bear the weight of not just the arch rocks but also any material which will be built on top before the former is removed. Any area of weakness can result in failure.

The support for the former should be resting on a solid base. Bricks or blocks are ideal for the support as they can be easily knocked away when required.

Care is necessary when arranging these support so that the former can safely be dropped down to allow its removal, without interfering with the stone work. I have heard of people being required to set fire to the former to remove it as it was not possible to get it out any other way!

With a half moon former it is possible and useful when placing the arch stones to mark lines on the outside to indicate the required slope of the builders and especially the risers.

When the desired arch is not a half circle, the lines should be drawn from the theoretical centre.

Caught on the way down.

Wouldnt it be nice if you could just levitate the stones up to where you need them. This one looks like it is on its way up to Joe, but it's caught in time on its way down. Most stones are on their way down. They are normally moving very slow in that direction, unless of course if you push them or throw them.

Stones like to be heavy. They like to be close to the ground. It is this quality that makes them useful. It is this consistencey that makes them stay where they are in a dry stone wall, in an arch or a cairn.

People are not always as reliable. They may change their minds on you. One day they may think that it is very cool to be given an opportunity to learn how to build challenging structures like the one above, and the next day decide that it's wrong to teach anyone else. Luckily stones are more consistent.

Stones, if fitted together properly, even though they are 'pulled' in that direction, will support each other and don't end up being in that great a rush to get to the bottom.

Experimenting with your hands.

People shouldn't be afraid of stones. They shouldn't be intimidated either by people who call themselves masons or experts. They shouldn't stop from experimenting and practicing and working with stones every chance they get to build and shape and organize and arrange stones in pleasing arrangements. Discover how structural they are. Take a course if you need to. If you get a chance to actually learn and get some hands-on practice with someone who is experienced in creating landscape features, such as walls of benches or stiles and arches, you may really benefit and actually be surprised what you can learn, and how satisfying it is.

It's not rocket science. It is a lot of fun and the basics are not so specialized that it should exclude people from rediscovering that primeval connection we all have to stones from the beginning of time.

I am disappointed with those who would have others kept in the dark about these elementary things and trying to hinder people from even wanting to find out about the many wonderful aspects of creating with something natural as stone. Leave the concrete and steel structures for the experts. Build something real, something simple and at the same time hug some stones.

Synthetic materials are bombarding us from every direction. Our contact with stone by contrast is getting more and more scarce. Pick some up while it is still lying around for 'lay people' to work with. Lay some, one on top of the other, and handle it and then use it in configurations as you see fit on your property and in your garden. Start with something simple. Let the stones speak to you.

Perhaps take a workshop or a seminar. Look around and see where stones are being used creatively, effectively and without any pretension ( hopefully somewhere in your area) and start to learn more about what is possible. If you can find books or people knowledgeable in using this basic material and doing cool things with the stones (who aren't hung up on hiding the basic rules of masonry from people who dont want to join some secret or elite club) and try to learn all you can from them.

How else will you know if you want to devote yourself to learning this honourable and very timeless craft?

Learning From Old Hands.

I thought this was very interesting in terms of getting across the amount work, passion and involvement required by someone who has been given the task of instructing others.

Hand Picked

It was as though all the participants for this weekend dry stone wall workshop were all 'hand picked'. Aaron a landscaper from Quebec and Simon one of his employees were quite a team who worked really well together building up one side of the arch and needed very little supervision. Mike and Ewen, two brothers from Ottawa and their friend Doug caught on to the concepts very quickly and covered a lot of the building of the other shoulder. Jake form Lindsay and Dan from Rochester carefully applied all they had learned in previous workshops and worked on the arch voussoirs and made sure the quality of the hearting was up to standard. Everyone had a chance to try their hand at shaping the rugged chunky sandstone material as well and very few stones broke the wrong way. I could not have asked for a better bunch of guys to get this unique Frontenac arch structure completed in the two days alloted for this workshop considering the scope of the project and the cold and windy weather. It seems amazing that 16 tons of random stone could be transformed to one beautiful looking arch and about 3 tons of very useless looking left over material at the end of Sunday.

How Handy Is Sandstone?

Progress went well on the Saturday of the Frontenac Arch workshop. The sandstone turned out to be fairly easy to shape. The guys working on the project picked up the principles fairly quickly and were making some good structural decisions. The hearting is a bit of a problem. The sandstone we are using doesn't seem to be nestling or fitting into the spaces as nicely as we would like. It is abrasive and a bit brittle. It's turning out to be not that handy as for wedging either. The smaller pieces have much less of an ability to shim the bigger building stones, the way limestone or granite chips would do, and so to avoid the wedges getting crushed with the weight and pressure of the bigger stones we think that we should to introduce granite instead for the important pressure points. Apparently limestone pieces would not work in combination with the sandstone, as acid solutions that wash carbonates from the limestone can chemically affect the durability of sandstone.

I have not read anything that says granite and sandstone should not be used in combination, but if anyone has heard this isn't a good idea, please let us know. But for this project at least it's off to find some nice granite rocks to break up and make better wedges to work into the arch structure today. It's not like there isn't a lot of granite to choose from in the this granite epicentre of the Ontario, here at the Frontenac Arch Biosphere.

More than a Hand Span

Sometimes I have to remind myself why I do this sort of stuff. Today Saturday it is rainy and cold and a good day to stay in doors. It is not the sort of day to be getting excited about building a wall out of stone. In fact I have to teach a course on how to build an dry stone arch. There are people coming from far away and this has been planned for many months and smugly labelled a 'rain or shine' event. There is no escape.

The large pile of irregular stones looks very unattractive this morning. Many of the stones are really big. There will be some 'mud wrestling' going on for sure, and we will all get very wet, but we will try to encourage one another and not let the weather dampen our enthusiasm for this unusual project.

A dry stone arch is to be built at the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Office near Gananoque Ontario. This will be the first dry stone arch to be built on public property in Canada that I know of and what better place than here. Im still learning about the this unique importance of this designated area of the planet. There is a geological connection to the naming of the Frontenac Arch. The bedrock here is all granite and is a part of the Canadian Shield here in Ontario and continues down into New York State as the Adirondack Mountains. On a map of Ontario and New York it roughly forms the shape of an hour glass. The neck being formed being the same geological makeup that passes through Thousand Islands, (islands which were apparently, millions of years before the glaciers came along, a thousand very high mountains.) The neck, if you will, is like an arch from one area of the Frontenac Biosphere to the other.

So then the idea of building a stone arch here isn't a completely arbitrary notion. Hopefully it will get people stopping and thinking about the geology going on in this area. I just hope it doesn't rain all weekend while we try to build it.

Higher Hands.

All the 'hands' had a great day today. The weather cooperated and the atmosphere on-site was charged with energy. Five of us created this Scottish-type dry stone cairn north of Whitby Ontario and enjoyed every minute of it. After 5 days of working on it ,on and off over the last two weeks, we finished the structure at 5:30 on Thursday May 6th. (a bit too late to take the scaffolding down until tomorrow)

The fieldstone was all found locally around the perimeter of the golf course property. There was lots of hand lifting and fitting and hearting and measuring. The width at the base is 10 feet. The width at the top is 5 feet. The cairn is a whopping 14 feet 4 inches high. It was really exhilarating to build such an unusual feature. It required a combination of vision, confidence, cooperation and structural knowhow. Special recognition goes to Peter, Steve, Craig, Corrie, Joe, and especially Wilson for doing their part in making this towering 'celebration in stone'.

Do the 'hands of time' turn as slowly for a rock?

Never mind how long it takes before moss starts to grow on a tree or a rock, think about how long it takes for lichen to grow on a stone! Ages. My hands have got me thinking about this a lot recently. I have a little video for people today. Double Click the link below to see it .
http://vimeo.com/7867746

Hand Ball

People often assume they can't build dry stone walls with 'round stones'. But that is not true. When I have to use smaller, chunky, somewhat rounded fieldstones, I definitely have to think more with my hands than my head. Amazingly these stones are not as difficult to fit as they first seem, once I get into the groove. The fact is, in any given pile of stones, there are very few completely round 'ball shaped' ones. Most of them are more like eggs or odd shaped potatoes and will have some length to them, and I have to use this 'elongation' to my advantage. The rule is simple, every stone needs to be laid lengthwise into the wall.

The basic pattern I am going for (as I look at the wall face on) is a kind of layered honeycomb, not a grid or jig saw pattern. As I place stones snugly up to one another in horizontal lines (called “courses”) whenever I can, I not only make sure they fit well on two surfaces, (the bottom and one adjoining side) but I try to actually lean each stone against it's neighbour, working right to left, to create a dynamic force along the length of the wall. Of course the bulky mass of each individual stone must always be set 'leaning back' into the wall too, so then even rounder stones are 'trapped' and won't want to fall out.

Scotch on the Rocks

Our daughter Maddy's 17th birthday today. Cause for a celebratory drink I think. Cheers!

Just Be Leaving Any Stone That Lets You Know It's Too Big To Handle.

It is a fairly practical idea to use the heavier boulder-type stones at the bottom of a wall so that you don't have to lift them and so that you can bury any irregular bottom surfaces of these stones in the ground and orient the better faces outward. If you use the bigger stones first, you will then be able to determine the number of irregular contour problems which you are going to have to deal with, (and fit other stones to) as you come along the wall with the next row (course) of stones.

The biggest stones you have in your stockpile should give you and idea of the width of the new wall you are going to build. If the wall is too narrow the boulders will stick out the sides of your wall, which is okay, if you are okay with how that looks. If the wall you are going to build is only a little bit wider than your biggest stones then you will not be leaving yourself much space to build on the other side of these stones properly. It's not good to be not believing yourself too much.

I generally plan on leaving at least a foot or more on the other side of the largest stones I will be using, and so determine my initial wall width that way.

If you do have to lift big stones up onto the wall don't lift them, roll them up a plank or up a ramp of stones.

Remember too that you don't have to use every big stone you come across. Some of them will be too big or so round that they will be almost impossible to build with and no matter how much you would like to believe they could work in the wall, they may in fact, compromise the structure and completely drain you from doing much more on the wall for the rest of the day.

April showers bring May flowers.

John Scott recently sent me this picture and commented. " Spring in the stone pile. Amazing how flowers find a way to co-exist with stone."

It is May already. The year 2010 is a quarter over and 'Thinking With My Hands' is now into its fifth month. Inspiration it seems, much like these flowers, spring out of what might be considered by some to be the dullest, hardest, most lifeless material on the planet. Words and ideas, ( and walls too) materialize almost effortlessly in the quest to understand the mind-hand process which is simply thinking about what can be done with (and through) a random piles of stones.

Order comes from chaos. And as Shakespeare so aptly phrased it in 'As You Like It',

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and 'good' in every thing.

As I continue throughout the year writing this daily account of 'hand held opinions', I am anticipating that there will be more and more of this 'good' to discover.

But for today, May 1st, for the regular readers, and for those of you who like to check in here just once in a while, I can't think of anything better to leave you with than this picture of stones and flowers.

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.

Is cracking annoying if it is on purpose?

As much as we might want to still use a 'cracked stone' in the dry stone wall we are building but use it like 'two stones', because it is still the best fit we have to work with - and as much as it still is keeping to the rule of 'one over two and two over one' - as much as the combination is still structural, and the cracked stone is doing exactly the same job as two different stones would do - and as much as it would be really convenient to not have to look for a different solution and we know there are no stones that are going to fit as well - as much these things shouldn't matter at all and we say to ourselves 'who is ever going to notice anyway?' - it does matter and most people will notice, maybe not consciously but in some strange way a wall with even one purposely laid 'twin stone', unless it is a split stone with 'mirrored halves' laid together, not 'two ends' of a the same side of a stone, it is always going to look wrong. Don't ask me why, but the crack will not be seen as a normal joint. Maybe its because the crack will always be perceived as having happened after the wall was built and therefore it is sending a message to those studying the wall that something has moved and there are some uneven stresses on it. Maybe it is because the stone is giving away the fact that it has been laid along the wall not 'into it'. Anyway it is about as annoying to look at as it is to listen to someone cracking their knuckles. You can't really tell them why its wrong, but it is.

Restraint

What are the things we should think about before we 'dive in' to building a dry stone wall?

When building with a random selection of stones it is important to think 'restraint'. You will want to save stones for the top copes and the ones with any length for the ends of the wall (cheek-ends). Flat stones are valuable for bringing the wall up to level before you add the coping too. Stones with good shapes are likely to be the ones you want put in the wall before any of the awkward looking stones, but by not using these “good ones” right away you will have a nice selection throughout the extent of the wall. It is often a good idea that you lay out your stones in distinct piles; normal building stone, coping or flattish stone, through stones and hearting so you get a feel for the variety of sizes and shapes you have to choose from, and that you don't use up any good corner stones or the longer flatter stones to quickly.

When working with others on a large stone wall project it is important to communicate and agree together to save these valuable (and sometimes scarce) 'well-shaped' stones. This way, working together or even alone, we not only get a well built wall but we learn the value of restraint. Using or re-using local stone instead of insisting on having expensive stones trucked in is another form of restraint. A willingness to refrain from rushing, but rather take a little longer to fit awkward or challenging stones together, can often make the difference between a good looking wall and a bland wall. It is this exercising of restraint, even on such a small thing as building a dry stone wall which carries over into our daily lives and then perhaps into the larger areas of concern, including the ecological well-being of this planet.

Let's give a big big hand for creativity.

This is something I did in Victoria BC a few years ago before I knew about Sue Lawty or her vision for a world-wide hands-on community of art installations.

The 'world beach project' seems like a really cool idea.

It gives everyone a forum to be creative and an opportunity to share their stone creations with everyone else. No one has to be a star, just a participator.

This is what thinking with our hands is all about.

We hold hands across creation and we behold what our hands have created.

World Beach Project

Let's join the hundreds of others and do something the next time we go to the beach.

A helping hand in the dry stone wall business.

Where would we be without Donny the truck driver? He is on the road most days delivering random dry stone now that walling has started to take off here in this part of Canada. . He has arranged his driving routine so that he specializes in bringing quarried stone for many of the walls DSWAC members build in southern Ontario. He always tries to make sure he brings exactly the type of sizes and variety of shapes that we need. We not only get the stone we need we also get a lot of news from him about the other wallers and their various projects. I think he kind of likes this dual role he has, but he says he mostly enjoys returning and seeing the kinds of things we build with the loads of material he brings us.

Other drivers might not take such an interest but Donny tries to tune in to the the kind of stone structures we build with our hands so he can keep bringing the right material. He has found a way to make himself indispensable. If we need a special load of random material we know he will drive many miles to a quarry, tell the loader guy to move over, load the truck himself, and then drive several hours to our job site, and often be there the same day we call him. He knows that whatever stuff he dumps there for us, it's going to have to be all used up. Twenty four tons of random material - you wouldn't want to get it wrong. We pretty much trust him that it isn't going to be full of 'fines', or too big, too small or have way too many weird shapes.

It has occurred to us that he has as much input into the kinds of walls going up over much of Southern Ontario as any us wallers do or the landscapers and architects we often work with. The stones he chooses to fill his truck with pretty much determine the look and style of all the walls we build. So Donny has a big hand in what we do.

Warming Our Hands

Here we are warming our hands around the fire pit which we completed this weekend in Guelph Ontario. It rained most of the day. There may not be a fire. That doesn't matter. We are warmed by the camaraderie and the sense of accomplishment.

We are also hot from having just moved a lot of stone. Not just the ones in the wall but all the other ones that we didn't use that had to be cleaned up so that the surrounding area looked tidy for this picture to be taken. A couple of guys Byron and Keith had to leave right after this picture was taken, to drive all the way back to Ottawa. They had nearly a six hour trip ahead of them.

We anticipate in years to come there will be a lot of telling camp fire jokes and singing of camp fire songs around here. This already feels like a kind of age old meeting place of stones and fire and people. These three are always interacting and affecting one another.

And hands and hearts will be warmed by many real fires that burn here in the future, in this stone-enclosed circle, but what was learned here will kindle more dry stone projects too, (for the hands who showed up to participate in this workshop) and so hopefully more and more hands will be warmed in an ever widening circle.