Tower View

This photo I took on February 4th 2014 shows the wooden viewing platform where occasionally we'd throw balls from during some of our wilder games of litho bolos. (Note the trees in the background.)

The platform had been constructed by the realtor listing this coastal property to allow potential buyers to be able to see above the tops of the tall oaks and redwood in order to catch a good view of the Pacific Ocean below.  

After the land had been purchased I suggested to the owner that it was only right that the wooden structure now be taken down and a proper stone lookout tower be built there in its place.

Amazingly, that is exactly what happened.

Here is the Irish tower that was designed and eventually built. As you can see from the position of the trees, it is located on the very same spot that the original viewing platform had been constructed.  

The above photo I took early in February of 2017, three years later, shows the completed stonework the day that all the scaffolding was taken down.

Visitors who come to admire the view are all blown away by what they see. Oh, and yes, the view of the ocean from the top the tower is pretty nice too.

Fighting the Stone People

Sometimes working with stone can be a battle. It's almost like the stones have a personality. There's always a few rebels that resist your every effort to put them in their place. 

It's not always best to confront them face to face or try to show them who's boss. Better to walk away and just accept that sometimes there needs to be a balance of power.

A hit or miss situation.

Bicycling along the old Kern Canyon Road yesterday I rode past several places where huge boulders had recently slid off the mountain. The sobering reality of such big rocks occasionally just careening down onto the road really hit me.

The thing is, I'm fortunate in that I don't go too many days without getting to see and hold rocks of all shapes and sizes. I always enjoy working with them on some project or other. 

It's interesting. When I am working with them, I may often have to smash one or two of the more awkward shaped ones with a hammer. 

So then, in a sense it's true that if I'm away from them for any length of time, I end up 'missing' them, (in both senses of the word) 

I guess I'm asking myself if it's the same for them?

Is it only when I'm not there that they miss me?

Dealing With Imperfection

Stones remember where they've been hit.

Stones have memory. Every blow of the hammer sends a distinct message through the chisel to the stone's core matrix.  The stone 'remembers' the direction, strength and angle of each strike. A detailed record of these impacts is kept until an interior line is conceived along a prescribed, but not yet formed, interior plane. 

The right combination of hits is like inputting the right combination on a lock. It 'unlocks' and opens the stone.

How to Dump Sand From A Pickup Truck

Tie bag of sand to a tree

Drive away

Voila

An ice form.

A sheet of ice that formed in our water barrel was the inspiration for a small arch we built yesterday 

We had left the barrel half full of water and the ice that formed over night on the surface was more of an eclipse because the barrel was sitting on a bit of a tilt. The sheet of ice supported the arch temporarily and then fell away and melted leaving the arch still standing there.

I find creating things with natural materials at least once a day, no matter how small or seemingly unrelated to what ever else I'm building, is still the best way I know to stay in touch with my surroundings and the potential that lies within. 

Take Your Pic.

What do we see in stone? What does it see in us?

What can I make next? - that feeling never goes away.

Fireside Chat

I am impressed with the direction several very talented masons have taken fireplace designs to over the past 25 years. I think of the work of Lew French particularly. His rustic funky off-the-wall creations seem refreshing and spontaneous.The fits are stunningly tight. The joints usually have little or no mortar showing. The mix of driftwood, huge rocks, old boards and beams is convincing and often unpredictably pleasing. 

And there are others who have introduced intriguing swirls  and a sense of motion into their fireplaces, literally spiralling away from the drab, sterile, static, stone and concrete fireplaces that have permeated living rooms from even before the post modern era .

I myself have taken a bit of a side step from all this, though it is very positive exploration. While I like to see stone fitting exquisitely tight in other's work and appreciate the introduction of motion and mixed media into the mix, the patterns I seem to gravitate to in my own work result from a fascination with the structural look of old dry laid walls. 

I like to imagine my fireplaces could have actually been built without grinders and saws (and sometimes they are ) and that they appear to have been made without mortar - which of course they haven't. (The joints have just all been raked back so you can't see the 'devils cream'.)

This dry stone look gives it a kind of appealing primitive feel, as the familiar bonds and predictable random coursing augments the semi traditional 'log cabin' fireplace look. 

That being said, the traditional feel is subtly tweaked with occasional triangles, carefully spotted feature stones and other stylized design features to create a subtle symmetry (or asymmetry ) which all hopefully works together to prove, at least to me, that while 'form' and 'function' may not agree on who is following who, stonework is best appreciated when all the elements combine to give a convincing sense of structure. 

My heart is not in my throat.

After the damper has been set in place at the top of the throat and most of the channel has been formed with firebricks, stones are laid over the opening. 

They are mortared to form a structural  'jack arch', even though there is also an angle iron supporting this span of stones. ( The angle iron leaning against the stones in this photo isn't it . That's just there temporarily to hold the key stone in place until the other stones across the opening are set )  

Once all the arch stones are mortared together, the top of the throat is bricked up. I braced a stiff slab of styrofoam at the correct angle to temporarily support this corbeled brickwork until everything set.

Then comes the messy job of getting up into the firebox and  filling all the joints and parging the entire throat up to the smoke chamber. 

Actually Mark said he enjoyed this part. My heart just isn't in it. In fact, I hate it. Chunks of mortar always fall in your face. 

I'd much rather be hearting dry stone walls. 

The Off Balanced Damper.

We modified the metal plate taken from the damper of the old metal heatilater that we had previously removed. It took some grinding and reshaping to get it to fit the new channel which will basically create the throat of the fireplace and is now made with firebrick instead of steel. 

In this case the damper plate is modified by having a rod welded the length of it (slightly off centre), so that it is heavier on one side and so tends to want to tip. This off balance aspect is important . 

Both ends of the rod will be imbedded into the side walls enabling it to pivot and flop down either way. The most difficult thing now is to position it (in a properly formed brick channel ) so that it is able to swivel to a position where it can stay open (allowing smoke to pass both above and below the damper plate ) while also being able to pivot back the other way to stay closed, simply because the plate's axis is off centre  The damper has to rest snugly in both positions without getting caught on the side walls as it is rotated.

The photo above show the damper at about 45 degrees in the full open position.

All this fitting and damper work has to be completed before setting the stones in front over the arch opening. There will still be a lot of reaching up inside to finish the brickwork connecting the visible stonework of the arch up into the throat reaching up to the smoke shelf.  Which I haven't talked about yet.

Just Wondering

You can always count on Rumford's proportions

It's worth looking up Count Rumford on Google if you've not heard of him. It was over 200 years ago that he experimented with designs for heating with wood in an open fireplace and figured out the best proportions for creating efficient radiant heat. His design has never been significantly improved upon.

In this stone retrofit, the more efficient proportions of a Rumford fireplace will require laying firebrick to create a shallow firebox with canted sides and a fireback that slopes forward. 

My firebricks are inter-fingered into the dovetailed cornerstones which are all shaped at about 105 degrees instead of 90. Stones form the outer corners where there is very little heat buildup. This creates a much better look than firebrick quoining.

We are using black 2 inch firebrick and black tinted mortar (which makes for a less 'new looking' firebox). The black mortar joints are recessed in the stonework to look like they're dry laid while the brickwork in the firebox is pointed flush.

It's starting to look less rough.

The process of changing over to a traditional stone Rumford from a drab looking metal insert clad with concrete bricks can be a dusty and messy, but it's worth it. The exiting rough-in is still exposed and the new stone construction is still looking a bit untidy.

But here comes the new hearth.  It's made of heavy 3 inch thick granite. 

The raised hearth is not actually part of the Rumford design. It is more of a concession to expedience, as we pretty much have to rebuild everything starting at concrete floor level. 

Slowly but surely the stately look of well proportioned stonework emerges, imposing a more pleasing order and structure to the rough looking chaos of masonry behind.

I got my flu shot today.

I went up on the roof and measured the existing chimney flu. The inside dimensions are a generous 18" by 10" which will allow our fireplace opening to be quite large, somewhere around 38" by 44".

We managed to remove the old metal heatilator in the afternoon too. The three amigos helped me - Jose', Hose B and Hose C.

See you later, heatilator !

I'm thinking, for mixing cement tomorrow, maybe we can use some other hoes, eh?

A long awaited fireplace project

Back in November my client sent me the photo of their original concrete brick fireplace after he'd ripped out all the ugly bricks.

He wrote to say they were looking forward to us coming and rebuilding them a nice Rumford fireplace out of stone when we come.

It looked pretty much the same when we arrived last Monday to begin the work.

After staring at the exposed 'rough-in' with the ugly 'heatilator' in the corner for the last three months, I'm thinking my clients will be relieved to have their stone fireplace soon. It will certainly improve the look of the living room.

Napa Valley Dry Stone Walls

There are some great dry stone walls in California around Napa Valley 

These particular walls are found along highway 128.

A lot of stone walls in this area border the perimeters of the vineyards. 

There is a kind of symbiotic relationship between walls and vines - stones and grapes. 

Vines actually like to grow in stony soil and grow best warmed and protected by the walls. 

At the same time, stone walls like looking their best nestled into the tidy aesthetic landscape created by rows and rows of grape vines.

The walls in Napa all seem to be saying,  "Hey, we're very much part of the whole wine experience."

February 14

Don't forget to Heart your walls well !

An Opened and Closed Workshop

My students and I were very pleased to finish the mica schist/ basalt/ bronze dry stack double arch yesterday at Lyngso . 

The ten of us were down to the wire to get it done but magically at 4 pm at 'closing' time, we were able to pull out the forms and enjoy that wonderful feeling of 'closure' as we peered out through the two 'openings' for the final photo shoot.

Many thanks to Vic and Kan and the whole crew at Lyngso for having us there and providing such great material and a place to build out of the rain, and in this case, out of the glaring sunshine.