Hammerhead Stoneworks

The wall already had some nerd cred; at one end I installed a small chunk of pegmatite that reminded me of the ice cave from the first Superman movie. It’s the wrong color, but the huge crystal structures evokes primal memories of Krypton. A couple of hours later, as I was laying the cap course and listening to Chris Hardwisk’s The Nerdist Podcast in my headphones, renowned author Neil Gaiman compared writing to the art and practice of making a drystone wall. I do some of both and see the parallels.

I often leave things behind in a wall. Usually they’re small tokens, like marbles and such. Since I still have quite a bit to build here, I’ve decided to leave a time capsule in the depths of this wall. I have an old flash drive that’s of no use to me, so I’m going to load it up with a couple of Nerdist Podcasts, some of the music I’ve been building to and a few other things, and stash it in the wall.

I visited the dentist wall recently. I had heard that the bench had been tagged. It appears that a girl named Kelly has scrawled her name on the back with a Sharpie. Happily, weather was already erasing Kelly’s name; it’s not even visible in the photo.

I’m back to work in the Rock Hill area of South Carolina. I’m facing a grill with eight inches of stone- Arkansas Hackett and Tennessee sandstone. It’s the same mix as the columns I built on this horse farm a few months ago. In this picture you might notice a single piece of limestone (it’s a corner) and a couple of bits of Pennsylvania bluestone; I’m working on a sedimentary theme. I don’t do much facing like this, but I still like to lay everything in the bedded plane- as it was formed in the Earth so long ago.

The next image shows the backside of the grill. The opening will have a pair of wooden doors and be used for storage. The lintel is supported by a steel shelf that’s anchored into the block and concrete structure.

The bottom image shows the face of the grill, from the deck. That jumble of stone in the middle is where the fire will be, after a steel insert is fabricated and installed. The overall design is by Jeff Mills, a gifted craftsman and builder from the area who recruited me to the project. The steel pipes will support a roof structure.

I have built over this area since this photo was taken. The stone that plugs the hole can be removed easily, though from a distance, it appears to be snug in the wall.

The most recent issue of Stonexus, the magazine of the Stone Foundation came out recently. It includes an article I wrote about sustainability in stone work construction. The case study features the Melrose residence.

At the stone yard Thursday, I met a young man named Seth who had started working there recently. As we were walking around the yard talking about the products, he said, “Aren’t you the guy who does everything the old-fashioned way? Like with hammers and chisels?”

I am that guy.

After waiting all summer, the columns finally got their hats. Last Thursday, after a full summer of research, phone calls and waiting, I ventured back down to Rock Hill, South Carolina and put the big cap stones on the columns and walls. We eventually ended up ordering stone directly from the quarry in Hackett, Arkansas. The column caps are single pieces, approximately 33 inches square and four inches thick. We strapped them by the corners and lifted them onto their mortar beds with a skid steer loader. It all went very smoothly, though we did discover that the flatter the stone lay in the rigging, the easier it went into place. Seems obvious as I write it, but in application, it didn’t seem like a couple of degrees would make such an impact on how they skooshed the mortar underneath them. Based on volume, I guess that the stones weighed between 400 and 450 pounds each.

The columns are structural, meaning the stone supports itself; there’s no block, besides the footing. There is a steel armature inside each column. The armature pokes out of each column over the wall. It’s job is to support timbers that complete the design. You can see the ‘fins’ on the left side of this column, with bolt holes already drilled. The armature has no role in the stone structure, but it was incredibly helpful because it gave me a way to suspend strings to keep my corners on target.

The mailbox is my favorite part of the project, mostly because of the challenges it embodies. When we agreed to terms on the project there was an aside about a mailbox. I imagined something small, mounted on the face in some easy way. I certainly didn’t imagine this affront to the internet age. I built a vault around it using quoins or cornerstones, an old school structural approach. I love the immensity, the real stone, real structure feeling it has. There’s no steel or block hiding in there- just stone on stone.

The image below shows the back of the columns on the opposite side of the driveway. Note the other vault, a massive control panel for the automatic gate mechanism. The stone door is held in place by friction. In the spirit of full disclosure, there is a piece of plate steel behind the lintel, supporting the column above.

I just added a new portfolio page for Amy’s steps.