What a day of stonework looks like

Most of the time goes to looking, not hitting. You sort a pile of stone by size, pick one up, turn it over to find its flattest face and try it in the wall. If it rocks, you knock off the lump that makes it rock or you pick another stone. A session runs a half day or more, because setup, sorting and cleanup take an hour before a single stone is laid. A beginner places somewhere around a ton of stone in a full weekend, which is about 6 feet of knee-high wall. You will be sore the next morning in your forearms, hands and lower back.

A worker in dusty overalls holding a club hammer and a pointed chisel together in one gloved hand — Club hammer and point chisel

Rough-cut stone blocks stacked loosely on gravel, in black and white

Dust, chips, weight and the rules

Read this before the first hammer blow

Silica dust

Sandstone, granite, quartzite and bluestone are full of quartz. Cutting or chiseling them releases dust too fine to see, and breathing it causes silicosis, a lung disease with no cure. Wear a P100 respirator whenever you cut or dress stone, work outdoors with the wind at your back, hose the dust down instead of sweeping it and change clothes before going indoors. Limestone and marble carry far less silica, but wear the mask anyway.

Flying chips

Chips leave a struck stone fast enough to blind and can travel 20 feet. Wear Z87+ eye protection for every blow, turn so the chips fly away from you and keep children, pets and helpers well back or in glasses of their own.

Hands, feet and ears

Wear leather gloves and steel-toe boots any time you move stone. Set a stone down on one edge and lower it so your fingers are never underneath. Put on hearing protection for chisel work and any time the grinder runs, which is around 100 decibels.

Lifting

Stone weighs 150 to 170 pounds per cubic foot, so a block the size of a microwave oven can top 150 pounds. Roll, flip and slide stones instead of carrying them, walk big ones up a plank, and move them the last few inches with the digging bar. Lift with a straight back and bent knees, and treat about 50 pounds as your solo limit. Never stand downhill of a stone that is being moved.

Grinder and saw safety

Keep the guard and side handle on, hold the tool with both hands and stand to one side of the blade so a kickback misses you. Cut in shallow passes about 1/4 inch deep, let the blade stop before you set the tool down and plug into a GFCI outlet. A grinder makes far more dust than a chisel, so the respirator and sealed eye protection are not optional. The same rules apply to a rented masonry saw.

Wall height and permits

Keep a first freestanding wall at or under 3 feet. Most US building codes require a permit, and usually an engineer, for a retaining wall taller than 4 feet measured from the bottom of the footing, and for a shorter one that holds up a driveway, slope or building. Many towns set lower limits or cap front-yard walls at 3 or 4 feet, so call your building department before you build anything that holds back soil.

Call 811 before you dig

Even a 6-inch foundation trench can hit a cable or a gas line. Filing an 811 request is free, and the utilities mark their lines within a few business days.

Official guidance, free to read

OSHA: Crystalline Silica Free federal guidance on silica dust from cutting stone and how to control it

Build your first short wall

Tick each one off as the wall goes up

Do this first, it is free

811 Before You Dig Free utility marking request for every US state. File it a few business days before you dig

What you can build in your first month

Stone garden edging

One course of fist-to-loaf-size stones set in a shallow trench teaches you to read faces and close joints with almost no heavy lifting.

A 6-foot practice wall

Two faces, a packed core and cap stones at knee height use every rule of dry stone work in miniature.

Dry-stacked raised bed

A one-sided wall about 18 inches high, leaned back against the soil it holds, is the gentlest version of a retaining wall.

Repointed garden steps

With the Mortared Work kit, raking out and refilling a few feet of failed joints shows you how mortar behaves before you trust it with a wall.

One squared block

With the Stone Dressing kit, a rough stone becomes a clean-edged cap or step end.

Five rules that keep a wall standing

One on two, two on one

Every stone covers the joint below it. A vertical joint that runs up through two or more courses is where a wall splits.

Length into the wall

Lay each stone with its long side pointing into the wall, not along the face. It shows less stone but locks in far more.

Pack the core

Fill between the two faces with fitted pieces of rubble, placed by hand as each course goes up. Gravel shoveled in settles and pushes the faces apart.

Keep the lean

Both faces lean in about 1 inch for every 6 inches of height. The string lines are there to hold that slope.

Level and tight

Each stone should sit without rocking before the next goes on, with its top close to level. Fix a wobble by trimming the stone or pinning it from behind, never by wedging the face.

A close view of thin, flat sandstone pieces dry-stacked in tight, level courses with no mortar — Flat sandstone laid dry

Choosing hammers and chisels, and keeping them safe

Pick a hammer you can swing for an hour

Hold it at the end of the handle with your arm out. If the head droops within 10 seconds, it is too heavy for you today.

One-piece steel or wood handle

Forged one-piece hammers never loosen. Wood absorbs more shock and can be replaced. Either works if the head is tight.

Match the striker to the tool

The club hammer hits chisels. The mason's hammer hits stone. Never strike two hammer faces together, because hardened steel can shatter.

Before each session, check the struck end of every chisel

Hammering spreads it into a mushroom shape whose curled rim breaks off as steel splinters. Have the rim ground back to a slight bevel at a hardware store or sharpening service when it starts to curl.

Check the cutting edges too

A chisel edge that has gone round skids instead of biting. The same grinding visit restores it.

Look over handles and heads

A cracked wood handle or a loose head goes out of use until it is fixed.

A wall of rough-faced tan stone blocks set in wide mortar joints

Three ways to take it

Start dry, then add mortar or a chisel

Dry stone wallingNo mortar at all. Walls flex with frost instead of cracking and can be taken apart and rebuilt. This is where almost everyone starts, and the base kit covers it.

Start here

Pick a spot for a 6-foot practice wall no more than 2 feet high, well inside your property line, and file an 811 request. While you wait for the marks, call two stone yards and ask what a ton of local wall stone costs delivered.

The Stone Trust: how to build walls

Mortared WorkStone bedded in mortar for steps, low garden walls and repairs to existing masonry. A mortared wall is rigid, so a new one needs a concrete footing below your local frost depth. Repointing old joints is the sensible first job.

Start here

Find 2 feet of crumbling joints on a garden wall or a loose stone on a step you own and repoint it. Rake the old mortar out about 3/4 inch deep, dampen the joint, pack in fresh mortar and check it a week later.

Stone DressingTurning rough stone into pieces with straight edges and flat faces, using pitching and point chisels and sometimes a grinder. It is slower and more exacting than walling, and it is how caps, corner stones and steps are made.

Start here

Take one block of soft limestone or sandstone and square a single edge. Draw a pencil line along a straight board, pitch off everything outside the line, then level the face behind it with the point.

Open a card to see its first step. Mortared Work and Stone Dressing each add their own tools to the barrow, and you can switch them back out from the kit.

What trips beginners up

Stone rarely breaks where you want at first. Expect to waste a few pieces learning how your local stone splits, and score a line all the way around before hitting hard.
Progress is slow. The base course takes longest, because every stone in it has to be dug in and bedded until it cannot move.
A ton sounds like a lot and looks like very little once stacked. Order 10 to 20 percent more than the math says, because some stones will not suit any spot.
Using up the best stones early leaves you nothing for the top. Set the flat cap stones and long through stones aside before you start.
Stacking stones like bricks along the face is the most common fault. It looks neat for a year and then bulges.
Skipping the frames and string to save an hour produces a wall that wanders and leans the wrong way.
Starting with a retaining wall is a mistake. Soil and water push hard, so build a freestanding wall first.

Where to learn

A weekend workshop is the fastest way to get the feel of it, because an instructor can show you in ten seconds why a stone is wrong. The Stone Trust in Vermont runs one and two day introductory courses at training sites in several states, and the Dry Stone Conservancy in Kentucky teaches workshops and a longer masonry course. The Stone Foundation lists workshops and events across the country. Much US teaching follows the methods of the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain. For reading, look for a dry stone walling manual at your library before you buy one.

Workshops and craft bodies

A dry stone wall running across a green pasture and fading into fog — A field wall in fog

Why the list looks like this

Stone is the real expense and the tools are cheap by comparison, so the list starts with a call to a stone yard. Half of the essential lines are safety gear, which reflects the hobby: the hammer costs less than the boots that protect you from what it breaks. The recommended lines are the string, level and bar that make a wall straight and spare your back. The Mortared Work and Stone Dressing kits are add-ons for those two directions, so skip them until you choose one. The list assumes you already have a shovel, a tape measure and a wheelbarrow, or can borrow them.

Squared sandstone blocks with rough rock faces and narrow raised mortar joints — Squared sandstone blocks

Load the barrow

The first line is the stone itself, which you order from a yard near you and not online. The essential and recommended tools start in the barrow. Tools for Mortared Work and Stone Dressing join once you pick that direction, above or from the add-ons in the kit. Compare the options, then set your picks and check out from the kit. Clicking a card selects it there.

Wall stone and gravel from a local stone yard

essential · Materials

Stone is the material and the main cost, and it is far too heavy to ship. A yard near you sells what was quarried or gathered locally, which is also the stone that looks right in your area.

Not sold on Amazon · order from a local stone yard

Not sold on Amazon. Call a stone yard, quarry or landscape supplier and ask for wall stone (also sold as fieldstone or building stone) by the ton, delivered. Expect roughly $150 to $500 a ton depending on the stone. One ton builds about 6 feet of a 2-foot-high freestanding wall. Ask for a mix of sizes with some flat pieces for caps, and add a few buckets of crushed gravel for the base. Free stone from your own land or a neighbor clearing a field works just as well.

Mason's hammer

essential · Core tools

This is the tool in your hand all day. The square face knocks off corners and the chisel end trims a stone so it sits flat.

budget

Goldblatt - G06993 GOLDBLATT Brick Hammer, 20 Oz Bricklayers Masonry Hammer, 12-Inch Hickory Wood Handle

4.6(200)

$21.20

Stonemasonry

What a day of stonework looks like

Dust, chips, weight and the rules

Build your first short wall

Five rules that keep a wall standing

Choosing hammers and chisels, and keeping them safe

Three ways to take it

What trips beginners up

Where to learn

Why the list looks like this

Load the barrow

Wall stone and gravel from a local stone yard

Mason's hammer

3 lb club hammer

Hand-guarded mason's chisel

Impact-rated safety glasses or goggles

Half-mask respirator with P100 filters

Leather work gloves

Steel-toe work boots

Earmuffs

Braided mason's line

24-inch level

Digging bar

Bagged mortar mix

Brick trowel, 10 to 11 inch

Tuck pointer, 3/8 inch

Mortar mixing tub

Pitching chisel

Point chisel

4-1/2 inch angle grinder

4-1/2 inch diamond blade