Product Description

Includes equipment requirements, instructions for creating wall foundations, coping with drainage problems, and hints for incorporating gates, fences, and stiles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87734 in Books
• Published on: 1976-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780882660745
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Well, here it is: Basic tools, basic techniques, illustrations and photographs, and all the planning and safety instructions you will need to build a variety of stone walls. This is a book that can help you beautify your back yard with the grace and texture of natural stone, or launch you on a career of reconstructing the Inca Empire or building a second Great Wall of China if you get carried away. Up to you...

From the Back Cover
A beautiful stone wall...yours with just a rock pile, a few tools, and this book!

Building Stone Walls tells you all you need to know to build your own sturdy walls. Carefully detailed, clear drawings show the techniques to follow -- and how to avoid problems.

Learn here about:

-- wall foundations

-- basic "one-over-two" method

-- chinking "in" or "out"

-- height-to-width formula

-- using lower quality stone

-- building retaining walls

-- building in gates, fences, and stiles

-- moving stone, boulders.

Excellent example photos show good and poor walls, while the author's lively text tells you how to build, step-by-step. Slopes, drainage problems, using rubble -- these challenges and more are thoroughly covered.

If stone is your material, then this is the book for you.

About the Author
Author John Vivian is a veteran practitioner of many country crafts. He has written The Manual of Practical Homesteading and Storey's Building Stone Walls. John lives in Rutland, Vermont.

Customer Reviews

Informative and fun to read; lots of good sense
Building Stone Walls, as a book, works very well. The writing, typography, design, and illustration all support one another like well-chosen stones, and the result is pleasing: a simple, wonderful book. Even if you have no plans to build a stone wall, the book is worth reading because you can't help but share the author's enthusiasm as he describes the permanence of stone walls, talks about different kinds of stone, discusses tools and techniques, explains footings and drainage, provides advice for working with not-so-good stone, and shares myriad other pearls of wisdom. And, if you are planning on building a stone wall, or just have a fondness for stone, then by all means add this book to your library.

Excellent overview; good first book on building with stone
Compact and concise, John Vivian's "Building Stone Walls" is a book that you can take with you while collecting (or buying) stone for your project, preparing the location, and building your wall. It offers a good overview of stacking stone, as well as a couple of less common ways of using stone (re-channeling moving water, for example). Best of all, it has some very practical, timesaving tips, particularly advice about when it is necessary to start with a trench and gravel base and when it is not.

With our particular project - building a retaining wall with field stone recycled from decaying fences around our house in the Catskills - we found that Vivian's book did not include quite enough detail. He only supplies a few paragraphs on the construction of a retaining wall, though to be fair, what information he gives is practical. By itself, however, this would not have been enough to guide us through the project.

For more detailed information on retaining walls, we turned to "The Granite Kiss", "Stone in the Garden" and "The Art and Craft of Stonescaping." Keep in mind, however, that the latter two books are more lavishly illustrated, a cross between a how-to book and a coffee-table book, so you probably would not take them out in the field.

That said, if you have never worked with stone, and want to get an idea of what is involved in planning and preparation, finding and moving stone, and building a wall, Vivian's book is a practical and inexpensive book to buy first. Five stars for useful, concise information in a very usable format.

Very brief, minimal detail.
This book concentrates on dry stone walls, even though the title does specifically say this. Although the book does mention mortar stone walls, minimal detail and description is provided. One could not possibly build a mortar stone wall from reading this book.