Fire

  Here are a few shots of me using the acetylene torch to "thermal" the exposed cut edges of the stones to give them a more natural look. Soon after these shots were taken I tripped, fell onto the torch, and became engulfed in flames.  Now, much like the stones, I too have a "more natural look".

Mending Wall

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

First Stones Going Up On The Fireplace

  Last week we dismantled the fireplace at Dan's shop and transported it all down to the jobsite in Boothbay, where we rolled them up long ramps on PVC rollers and into the house. It was daunting, due to some of the stones' rather large size and awkward shapes, and at times I suspected the twenty foot aluminum ramp was going to collapse beneath the weight, but the process went smoothly and free of catastrophe.

  The first stones really started to go into place yesterday. We set up staging on either side of the chimney and ran a ten foot I-beam, from which we hung the chain-fall. Dan picked up a handy little set of "dogs" that you actually insert into 4" x 5/8" holes drilled at 45% angles in the top of the stone--the chain pulling up on these two simultaneously enables us to pick the rock up and move it around without any fear of it falling. I marvel at the simple genius of it all day long.