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6/11/2025 0 Comments Preparing for Throughstones Splitting Stones into throughs that will tie both sides of the wall together.  The boundary wall, now at throughstone height. Now comes one of the slowest parts of building the wall- getting the throughstones on it. It is both a welcome break and frustration to stop the relentless upward churn of laying down courses and split stones. I love how solid the wall is once the throughs are on, but I also want to keep producing at the same rate as before.
The boundary wall is now between 20 and 24 inches in height, and after the through course, only a hand span of eight inches until we are capping. It feels very far away and very close, depending on how tired I am when I think about it. The lovely thing about getting the wall to this height is that it is turning into something that actually looks like a wall. when the base stones are in, it looks like a jumbled raised walkway. Two courses in, it looks odd. Three courses in, through height, it invites you to sit on it. A proper wall.
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We began work on a historic cemetery wall this week, a complete rebuild from scratch. The old wall had to be removed to reclaim an overgrown portion of the cemetery, and so we had giant mixed piles of stones and dirt to sort through.   Once the piles were sorted, we started splitting some of the biggest stones into throughs. It is interesting figuring out the compromises inherent in historic restoration work- many of the old walls built in New England were built poorly, and thus have fallen down over time. If I were to rebuild them properly, it might not look quite like a classic New England stone wall. But if I were to build them exactly the same, they would shift and disassemble themselves over the next few decades. Further complicating things is that many people don’t want “historic” walls to look like they did when they were built- they want them to look old while being new, look like they are falling down while being structurally sound. It is a tricky line to walk. One such compromise that I can hide is the throughstones. These are long, strong stones that tie together both sides of a wall. Most New England stone walls do not have throughs, but you can sneak them in without compromising the look. They make the wall last far, far longer than a doublestack wall with no throughs. I walk on my walls as I build them to feel for loose spots, and after throughstones go into the wall, the whole thing feels an order of magnitude more stable. We placed most of the base stones and the wall ends this week. I love placing base stones because you get a great deal of wall done in one day. However, you feel it the next day. Working with smaller stones, you might place 3 tons of stone in a day. However, working on these 100-300 pound base stones, you sometimes set as much as 25 tons in a day. On these days, I need to remember to eat extra meals to offset all the caloric output from the day, or I won’t be able refuel enough for the next day of work.  Building the wall ends is a little more finicky, and was a nice break from setting base stones. Wall ends are tricky. A stone in the main portion of the wall has stones on either side of it pushing it, pinning it into the wall. The end of the wall has that same force from one side and air on the other, so it takes special care to build it in such a way that the wall end holds together. Long stones called runners tie the wall end back into the main section of the wall in such a way the weight of the wall pins the end stones in place, rather than shoving them out. Headstones (or tie stones) are like throughs, keeping the two sides of the wall from separating, splitting open like a banana peel. In the picture below, the runners that make up the first and third layers of the cheek end extend back into the wall up to four feet, although you can't see it from this perspective..  It is deeply satisfying work.
5/23/2025 Two Cairns Sometimes you need a break from work. Strangely, I often find that when I am taking a break from work , I end up doing exactly what I do for work- playing with stones. Anuhea and I took a bit of time off from paid work to join in a challenge with our friend and fellow waller Dario. The goal was to assemble a cairn from pieces of quartz found on his property. Quartz is a very unforgiving medium, slippery stuff that shifts when you look away from a stone you thought was set. To make it more of a challenge, we were attempting to build it without any stone shaping. No hammers and chisels, please. Working quickly by eye, we paired a few perfect placements with an equal number of compromises. The plan shifted to a flat top as we ran out of quartz as we neared the end, and a boulder crowned it nicely. We also ended up compromising on the hammers and chisels as the stone supply dwindled, converting larger stones into stones that were a more appropriate size for top. It was a lovely challenge, and a good break from linear walls. Below is a cairn from earlier this spring, built in a couple of hours at our local co-op. The previous one was falling apart, so I decided to try a different sort of challenge- a herringbone cairn. For each course, I stood the stones up vertically, spaced apart a finger or two in width, and then gleefully knocked them into place like a circle of dominos. It should hold up for a while.  |
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