Stone Niche Construction

So, working on a project like this for me is fun. Each piece that I made had to fit so precisely. It was a challenge to figure out how to even make the stone pieces. I wish I could say that I was 100 percent with making them, but there were 2 pieces that I started and had to abandon. Sometimes it can be difficult to see if you can get the entire piece you need, when looking at an irregular shaped stone. The Idea is to get a stone as close to the size you need. Big stone are hard to come by, so you don’t want to use one that is way too big. That’s a waste of a stone, plus it is a lot more work to have to rough cut a stone down to the size you need if it’s way too big.

Fortunatly this was not the first round thing similar to this that I had built. So, I had some idea of how I was going to do it. Typically in masonry and construction in general corners are square. Well the Niche doesn’t have a square corner on it, every corner you can see if a funky angle. Making this one of the most challenging builds I have done to date. Especially since there was no plan or blue print to reference.

You can see in the photo that there is a form situated inside the Niche to create the first section of the radius. After the first two courses of the radius was complete it was time to remove the form and get ready for the cap. It was important to the customer and myself that the cap be one big stone. Simply because of how cool it looks. That meant we had to locate the biggest boulder we could find. Fortunatly the home owner had a tremendous amout of stone on his property. Once we made our selection we needed a skid loader to get the boulder out of the woods and move it to the area I was set up to work on it. I remember when that boulder came out of the woods on the forks of the skid loader. It was so heavy the skid loader was teetering back and fourth on it’s front wheels.

The boulder we found was also the biggest one that was available. That meant that if I made a mistake cutting it and there was a bad break there wasn’t another one to try again. I had one shot to get it right. The thing about cutting stone is you can always take more off, but you can’t put it back on. So, if you accidentially take too much off the piece is ruined. As you are cutting your way through a stone often times you will find hidden cracks that can ruin your day. There was one particular area in the cap where this was the case. I had to use a tremendous amount of caution when chiseling in that area. After you have about 30 to 40 hours of labor into cutting one stone. It would be devastating to ruin it with a bad break. Not to meantion a huge waste of money, so you do everything you can to ensure that does not happen. Luckily it worked out.

Stone masonry. Lancaster, PA.