Hammerhead Stoneworks

Yesterday, I spent the day with photographer Steve Whitsitt taking pictures of stone projects I have worked on around Asheville. He is putting together a coffee table book of stone work, hopefully to be published in 2011. It was fun and educational to spend a day with a pro photographer. We visited several projects and I got to take some shots too. It’s always good to revisit the work as it ages and weathers in.

I have been tying for a while now to get a good panorama of this project. It’s in a very tight space and I can only get a small bit of it in each image. Yesterday, while wandering around taking pictures with Steve, I got the best panoramic view of it I’ve done so far. Click the image for a larger view.

Last week I spent a good bit of time creating this structure within the column to house the biggest mailbox I think I’ve ever seen. I cut these quoins from step slabs, using petty much every technique I know how to tim them down. The cut-off saw was too loud and dusty and the line would wander over the full 36″ of the stone. Using the hand tracer chisel worked, but was really only efficient when I was cutting the shortest lines. Eventually I settled on cutting a clean line at each edge with the small grinder and then using feathers and wedges to cut the rest. This allowed me to keep my quoins fairly symmetric, but let me go more quickly than I would with chisels alone or even using the saw. Perhaps someday I will do a time trial to see which is faster, though I suspect the old school wedges (and an electric hammer drill of course) are faster than my Stihl saw with a diamond blade on it. Feathers are more fun too.

This is a detail of the armature that I am building the columns around. This is intended to provide a place for the wooden cross pieces to be hung and held away from the stone work. By doing this, the wood is more easily maintained and switched out as needed. It also protects the stonework, by reducing the chance that the wood will soak up a bunch of water and hold it against the mortar. Whenever wood juts into stone work, it inevitably creates a weak spot in the stone structure. This armature design also provides a place where I can mount my corners template, a piece of plywood with string stretched plumb to the footer. I got this idea from Fred Lashley; I don’t know if she invented it or adapted it from some other source.

A banker is a mason’s work table. You can’t see from this angle, but this table is minutes away from falling over; it has a significant, persistent lean. That’s a chunk of Arkansas Hackett sitting on the corner.

My friend Matthew in Chapel Hill sent me this image recently of Grandpa Tony’s memorial bench surrounded by spring time flowers. He mentioned that some neighborhood kids circulated a flyer announcing a lemonade and cookie sale at Grandpa Tony’s bench, suggesting it’s already become part of the character of the place. That’s always gratifying to hear.

On May 15th I’ll be leading a workshop at the Arboretum on making a stone bench similar to Tony’s.

My latest project is the entrance to a horse farm just outside of Rock Hill, South Carolina. Mortared columns and connecting walls frame the main gate. I’m using a Tennessee sandstone as well as Arkansas Hackett, a type of sandstone akin to Tennessee Crab Orchard but darker in color. The client already had a supply of this stuff, snapped strips about 5-6 inches tall and about the same thickness. It makes a lovely cornerstone. The metal fins sticking out the side will hold wood fence rails.

I’m working on a theory that columns- which I find to be one of the most challenging and intriguing expressions of stone- are like short stories, compared to the long form of walls or novels. There’s a different rhythm and a greater attention to detail is needed to achieve the desired result. You need all the same elements in a short story as novel- strong characters, a compelling plot, beautiful language, but you have less space to develop it and if you miss it, well it’s painfully obvious. And multiple that by four, since each side of a column is its own piece, but visually and strucutrally connected to the other sides. Stone columns are a common item in around here, and yet few capture the imagination. I’m hoping that this set will really pop.

The sun really brings out the textures.