53, Helping out.

During July I was able to assist a friend, Steve, by cutting for him some 40mm thick slabs. These were to cap off some rubble stone retaining walls that he was in the process of constructing in the backyard of his and Maryanne's house in Footscray.
I had a large rock in my collection that was to be surplus to my requirements, as, externally it showed a texture that varied greatly from that which I was using. Steve was happy to use it, regardless of the texture, so I picked the 2 tonnes of it up with the loader and moved it next to the shed and power supply.


We first split the stone the easiest way across its width using the plugs and feathers. This proved to be a bad mistake for me, as the texture proved to be, for the most part, of very fine grain. Had we split it lengthways I would have been able to use it to provide me with 4 decent window sills or steps and I would have found another rock for Steve. Oh well, too late now!


The next step was to halve those pieces again to create more manageable blocks of about 250kg to load onto the saw.






These blocks I then sawed to the 300mm slab width that was required.


... and then laid these over to saw the 40mm slabs. I squared the ends of some pieces and left the rest at their full length for Steve to cut and mitre as required to fit.






The (almost) finished product! Job well done Steve!.