Building with Native Stone

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Ends and Corners

T he sections that make your wall-building reputation are the ends, especially the ones that butt up to public view. I've known wall builders to haul good end stones for miles to make a lasting impression on posterity. You want the ends to hold up unaided; there's no more wall beyond them to rest against. So save the biggest and best square and long stones you can for ends. Then tie alternating courses in opposite directions (first face to face and then back into the length of the wall). See Fig. 10. For a really permanent end, extend your footing out in a wedge in front of the wall as far as you can.

A corner is a pair of ends built together, but here you tie alternating courses into first one and then the other length of wall. Since the wear of the seasons will have the wall heaving at the corner from both lengths, it should be stronger than a simple end. So save the best tie stones for corners (see Fig. 11). A giant may even find good use here.

And that's about it. Let's summarize: To build a good stone wall, dig as deep a footing as you can, lay the courses parallel and, level, and be sure to alternate thicknesses within them. Keep to the one-over-two principle, and tie your ends and corners well. Save the heaviest and flattest rocks for the top course (and shim the top flight well if there will be people or creatures running along your wall). Do you want to build in a gate, too? Then make two ends and hang a wooden door from hinges mortared into the cracks in the rock.

Putting up a stone building is another topic altogether, if only because the building codes enter in. Still, the wall-raising principles are the same; just increase your dimensions. A cellar is nothing but a really deep footing trench, dug square and scooped out in the middle. A doorway is two ends with a heavy timber or long, squared rock for a lintel. The front of a fireplace is a low door, and a window is a half-door. You frame windows and doors, set plates, and fasten roofing the same as in concrete-block construction (and there are plenty of how-to books around on that).

Frankly, I don't trust my own stonemasonry enough to try a pure dry-laid or even a mud-matrix-filled stone building, so Martha and I will use steel reinforcing rods and a mortar-rubble matrix inside the barn's planned rock walls . . . which is the same principle—with a few modern embellishments—used in that old Pennsylvania Dutch barn that got me into stonework in the first place. We'll be laying a parallel set of thin but solid freestanding stone walls a few feet apart, then filling in the interior as we go.

It's a good project to think about. Just now the snow lies thick in the pasture, but spring can't be that far off. I can hardly wait for thaw so I can get at the rock pile out back.

EDITOR'S NOTE: John's book Building Stone Walls expands on the subject of this article and also discusses how to quarry rock and build stairs, stiles, gates, and retaining walls. It costs $7.45 postpaid from Garden Way Publishing, c/o Storey Communications, Dept. TMEN, Schoolhouse Road, Pownal, Vermont 05261.

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