Stone Eye, Hot and Dry

Clouds are banking in from the west, bringing the first significant precipitation to Vermont in months. April’s weather has felt positively ‘Southern Californian.’ Under intense sunshine, in powder dry conditions, I got started laying stone on the Stone Eye Project this past week.

This is my first experience working with stone from Mitchell Quarry. The Waits River phyllite is a medium to high grade schist.The parallelepipeds (ET’s term for prism shaped stones with sixfaces,allparallelograms) took some getting used to, especially their propensity to shatter along the bed-plane lines when any hammer-trimming is attempted.

By taking it as it comes, I’ve made friends with the material and can now appreciate its strengths. The stone is generally flat-bedded; allowing for even, level coursing and broad, solid surfaces to build upon.

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