We are currently working on a set of steps with a small patio area at the top surrounded by a dry stone retaining wall. It’s a really interesting landscaping type job which is testing our skills with laying “crazy” paving schist. The client had already laid the concrete base for the steps so we are paving on to the treads and schist veneering the risers. We are yet to start the retaining wall part of the job as the paving really needs to be completed first so that the wall can sit on top and lock in the edges.

This is what we started with

Cowboy works the level - yee hah!

Me and Matt working on the top step

Reuben and Mike laying the bottom step pavers

Thanks for the photos Steve.

We are now hoping to get the pavers laid and the top patio area sub grade prepared before we have to begin our restoration module next week.

Over and out.

TW.

Just before the winter holidays we spent a week carving the limestone blocks that we picked up on our quarry visit. Not much I can say really, the stone is so soft you can work it with hand tools as if it were a piece of wood. I was of the opinion that the design just needed to be released from the stone (in other words I had no idea what I was going to carve) so I just started chipping, cutting and sanding away until this came out.

It’s actually two blocks of limestone keyed together with a piece of wood acting as a dowel. It will now sit in my garden as a tribute to the lost art of ‘Making it up as you go along’…

At the end of June we took ourselves off to Oamaru to look at some of the historic limestone buildings and to visit Parkside Quarry where all of the Oamaru Limestone comes from. Day 1 and we drove from Cromwell, stopping off in Omarama, and then straight to the quarry for a bit of a nose around.

Leg stretching break at the top of the Lindis Pass

The absolutely brilliant "jelly mould" wall in Omarama - legendary stonework

Cut blocks of raw limestone ready for processing at the quarry

On the quarry floor

After the quarry visit it was in to Oamaru for a tour around the historic precinct, very interesting thank you very much tour lady (by the way, if you’re reading this tour lady, apologies for the smell my fellow student left in your building – send the bill for fumigation to the tech)… Anyway, lovely architecture.

Day 2 and we headed up to Timaru to visit the basalt processing site of Timaru Bluestone. Again, an interesting wander around and a nice business lecture from the chap that runs the place.

Working on Basalt blocks to be used as parking bollards in Timaru

After Timaru it was time to wind our merry way back down the south island and home, but not before stopping off in Cave to look at the best church ever! Built in 1934 as a memorial to the original runholders of Canterbury and Otago it’s just spectacular.

Reuben talks to the wall - it had a lot to say...

Check out the different coloured stones used to frame the stained glass window

Never was an award more justified - for him and the people that laboured to build this fantastic monument

Opposite the church was a gateway – to what we don’t know, but it also had some interesting stonework on it. Basalt carving and blockwork from 1932/33.

The inscription reads: "Erected to keep minds and hands busy during the Great Depression 1932-33. Wise men learn lessons from adversity" Love it...

As a footnote to this, I would recommend anyone to visit the church in Cave. Anyone that knows me well will tell you that I’m not the worlds biggest fan of organised religion, and you’d be hard pushed to get me in to a church under normal circumstances, however as a piece of architecture, well, even if you’re not a student of Stonemasonry you’d be hard pushed not to feel inspired to pick up a hammer and start making something after seeing this… awesome (and well done Matt for finding it – good work fella).

Ok, so I’m just going to blast through what we’ve been doing for the last couple of months – I’m sure I’ll miss some bits out but plenty of photos should cover any errors in the text…

After the arches we moved on to stone veneering. We built a timber framed wall on the side of a barn up at the block and prepped it as if it were a new build house wall. Veneering on to a cement board wall on the timber frame, we made sure to leave weep holes at the bottom for and moisture to escape from behind the stone and then started coursing upwards using brick ties at the correct spacings. This was my first real amount of work using a trowel so a bit of a learning curve but you get the knack pretty quickly; I’m still no expert but time will tell…

Veneering site

The wall, including a rare shot of Dunc working on after everyone else...

Close up of veneered area

It was great to have a real go at veneering for a few weeks as this type of work really should be bread and butter stuff in Queenstown once I finish the course. Looking forward to the advanced veneering module and working around a few window openings, lintels and corners.

ARCH UPDATE: pics below of the arches with the frames removed – they stayed up, woo hoo!

Punk arch with wood frame removed

Flat arch with frame removed

We recently had a crack at building some flat (and not so flat) arches on an area that had been veneered by last years class. We put up a wooden support over the window opening and just went for it, laying the stones in a bed of sand to give a slight arch and then mortaring them in to place. Mike and I had a go at one first:

First attempt, flat arch

The next day we decided to have a go at something with a bit more of an arch to it, and along the way the styling got a bit out of hand:

Punk arch

I guess that’s what it’s all about though, in training you can get away with this kind of thing…

Anyway, everyone had a go; some of the guys built a big arch, but low down to the ground so that when it collapses it wont land on anyone. Reuben and Matt, despite being beaten on styling by Mike and myself managed to put on a brave face for their arch as well. Good fun was had by all, and for me some of the most enjoyable days we’ve had on the course so far.

Over and out.

TW.

Since my last post we have finished construction of the free standing dry stone wall that we were building out at the block. We took down an existing wall that hadn’t been constructed to our exacting standards and re-used the stone, along with some extra from elsewhere around the block, to re-build the wall in more satisfactory way. The new wall must be a lot more dense as the stone we took from the previous wall only made up about two thirds of the new one. I found myself working on one end of the wall which was a bit tricky as you’re not only looking for single faces on stones, but also for right angles to fit in as well. A bit like doing a jigsaw but with no idea whether all the pieces are in the box or not. The weather has been starting to get a bit colder so we got the braziers going, burning some old pallets that we had. Nice to get the hands warmed up occasionally…

Before the coping stones have been added to the top

The team getting their hands dirty...

The finished product

Steve, Reuben and Mike discuss whether Andy Goldsworthy would be happy with our work...

Over and out.

TW.

Just in case anyone was worrying (and I know you all secretly were), my finger is looking much better thanks. Still not back to its old self, but certainly looking a bit less alien now. The nail completely dropped off a while ago and it’s been chugging along ever since.

Shortly after nail droppage...

And now the new nail is really getting going. Finger is still a bit wider and a bit flatter than it used to be but hey, that’s what the old “Granite Kiss” is all about eh!

On the mend

Oh well, it’s all good fun isn’t it?

Over and out.

TW.

One of the first things we did on our return from Easter hols was to get out on a field trip to the historic gold mining settlement of Bendigo. It was great to go up there and have a poke around some of the stone buildings and check out the way these guys were working stone over 100 years ago.

Also pretty cool was checking how deep some of the mine shafts these guys had dug were. We threw a decent sized stone down one of them and it was timed at 6 seconds before it hit the bottom! That’s a seriously deep hole. Huge amounts of respect has to be had for the gold miners of those days – they were properly tough…

So, just to get completely up to date, we have also just started work on our first free standing dry stone wall. The main difference between this and the retaining wall that we completed on campus at the start of the course is that this one is not retaining anything therefore has 2 sides. Obviously this means twice as much work and a lot more stone to pick through. Steve wants us to really take care over this job and try to achieve a high quality finish, which I’m sure we’re up to. We actually took down an exisiting wall which wasn’t up to scratch and are re-building in the same spot. We have the base stones in place now so we are good to go with the actual walling next week.

Bring it on!

Over and out.

TW.

While we were off for the Easter holidays we had to work on our presentation assignment. We had to put together a 5 minute presentation for our thoughts on the re-design of an area of the campus known as “The Square”. It’s never a particularly enjoyable thing having to stand up and talk formally in front of people, even if it is people you know, so a bit of preparation was in order. I started out by sketching some ideas on paper but soon grew frustrated with my toddler-style drawing skills. This led to me moving back to a medium I’m more familiar with – the good old fashioned computer. I downloaded SketchUp from the Google site and locked myself away for a couple of half days. It all came together pretty well in the end, and combined with a few Powerpoint slides I managed to waffle my way through about 4 and a half minutes. Here’s a few images from the SketchUp model.

All in all I was really pleased with the way the model turned out. I’d only done a few minutes on SketchUp a few years ago so to pick it up so quickly and turn out what by my standards is a pretty decent piece of work was very satisfying.

Over and out.

TW.

So, what have I been doing since the last post on this blog? We finished the block paving  job on campus (very nicely too), pic below of the finished article.

After the block paving job we moved on to a more interesting paving job for Raewyn who runs the Viticulture course at the College. She needed some schist paving laying on the pathway to her house that needed to tie in with the existing paving on a front patio area. What made it a bit different was that it was going to be schist cut in to squared off slabs – a lot of effort but a great look at the end (hopefully). Anyway, after much mucking about with finding a saw that worked we managed to get a few slabs cut and laid.

At this point we were rudely interrupted by the Easter holidays so we took 2 weeks off and had to leave the paving job to come back to after the break. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did come back and finish the job and very pleased we all were with it too.

The (pretty much) finished product

And that is the end of paving, for now anyway. Much fun was had in the process but now we’re moving back on to dry stone walls, free standing this time.

Over and out.

TW.