Dry Stone Walling Training

Taken from https://pixabay.com/images/search/dry%20stone%20walls/

One of my goals for this year was to learn some new skills and in the work area that was to learn about dry stone walling.  I registered to do a weekend training course with the Dry Stone Walling Association's Central Scotland (CSDSWA) branch at Blackruthven at the end of July and I thought I would write a very quick post about my experience here.

And because I always talk about the weather when it comes to work I thought I'd start with that 😉.  It had forecast rain for that weekend, but, apart from a downpour on Saturday morning, we got blisteringly hot sun and I managed to really work on increasing my farmers tan whilst squeaking around in my wellies.  The two trainers were Jim, who has been building dry stone walls for decades after retiring as a vet, and Martin, who had been on an apprenticeship with CSDSWA a couple of years ago and was now a fall time dry stone waller.

We were each given a metre to work on and which we would take responsibility for.  The previous wall that had needed repairs had already been mostly dismantled so we could re-use the stone and the first stage we had to do was to remove a section of grass and ensure the ground we were building on was flat.  Starting with the larger stones we started with the foundation stones, in which we really needed to ensure was flat, and then built up the base with stones reducing in size until we were half way up the height.  Then we placed cross stones on the wall for stability before building the second lift before adding on the final layer of stones, the cope stones.  A batter frame and string was used to ensure we got the right shape of the wall as we moved higher up the frame.

We had to ensure that the lines were as straight and close to the guide string as we could manage, and that the main building stones went at least a third of the way into the wall.  Any space in the centre was filled with smaller stones, acting as packing to ensure the wall remained strong, and placed between the stones to keep them flat in placement.  We followed advise like 'long is strong' and 'turn, turn, turn' when placing the stone into the wall.  We also had to ensure that the next layer of stones covered the joints between the stones of the previous, also to add strength.  There were a few tools and buckets we learnt to use during the training, but the main tool was the waller's or stone hammer.  This allowed us to alternate between breaking up the stone with the flat end, angled when you hit it (a new techniue I will definitely be taking with me), and to chisel at the stone with the angled side.

I was actually quite satisfied with the work that I did (though I managed to somehow delete the photo of my finished work, grrr), but I can definitely see where I can make some significant improvements if I were to build another wall.  There are some similarities between dry stone walling and the stone work I do in path building, especially when it came to the importance of packing the stones to ensure the strength of the structure, but the stones used are obviously much smaller and the placing of the stones much more delicate and precise.  I definitely had resist the urge to drop the stones rather than delicately place them on the wall, a mistake I made once and the noise it made brought me right back to what I was supposed to be doing.  Thankfully it didn't do any damage to the wall.

It was a very interesting way to spend the two days of my weekend, though it probably didn't give my body the rest I should have given it from work, and I really enjoyed learning about dry stone walling.  It has definitely given me some extra skills which I will be taking to work with me, but if I was to decide to do this as an additional job I would need to gain some extra qualifications and more hours in walling before I could start applying for work with different organisations.  They were also good enough to give us a book published by the organisation about dry stone walling and which covered the skills they had taught us over the weekend.  I'm definitely glad I signed up for this training course.