Almost two dozen wallers came to the Stone Trust Center in May for a 2-Day Introduction to Dry Stone Walling and a Cheek Rebuild Workshop. These wallers were looking to learn the basics of dry stone walling as it applies to the middle of a wall, or improve their skills at the ends of the wall. As instructor, Victoria Merriman said, “This class was notable in a number of ways!”
This weekend was a little different than other Intro workshops and Cheek Rebuilds because participants had the chance to build a new training wall from scratch, working out of piles of unsorted stone and sorting along the way. This is more of a “real world” experience for the many who were hoping to do something with piles of stone on their property. On Sunday people had the opportunity to switch to the new training wall with unsorted stone for more of a challenge, or switch to the pre-sorted area for less challenge. So the groups on each wall changed and people got to try walling over other people’s work. Many intro wallers chose to try out some stone shaping, as we had to make both copes and throughstones for the new wall. People shaped copes with brick hammers and chisels, and got to split granite using feathers and wedges.
Normally, the 2-Day Intro gives you more time to practice and get hands-on experience. This unique opportunity gave the group a whole new meaning to more practice and experience because they got to try things that most intro groups do not. For the Cheek Rebuild, this type of building is also more realistic for building a cheek end and give you better practice if you are thinking about taking a Level 2 Test. Having to sort stone and build from scratch shows a better understanding of the stone than taking it apart and putting it back together as it was. We appreciate everyone’s flexibility and openness to this opportunity and I hope that it helps everyone in their projects moving forward.
Thank you to intro instructors, Victoria Merriman and Dario Coletta, and Cheek Rebuild instructor, Ben Sandri. One participant said “I’m so appreciative of their tutelage and sharing their knowledge.” Thank you also to site champion, Jared Flynn for helping to organize and pitch in over the weekend to make sure everything ran smoothly.
