DIY-Stacked Stone Wall Class

Learning how to build a dry stacked stone wall

How do you create a stone wall without any mortar or cement? On a sunny fall day I took a trip to Opus 40, a quarry turned museum, in Saugerties, NY to find out. The instructor was artist and stoneworker Chris Layman of Fox Stonework, who would spend the day teaching me and a group of students how to build a stacked stone wall.

For the class, we worked to build a retaining wall set into a hillside in a wooded area of the Opus 40 grounds. As a former quarry, the site was overflowing with flat bluestone rocks, just waiting to be assembled like a puzzle into a strong and durable wall. For more on visiting Opus 40 see here.

Tools

Building the wall required few tools, primarily hammer and chisel (or masonry hammer) for splitting and shaping the bluestone pieces, a level, and safety glasses for stone splitting. Many of the class participants also had knee pads and steel toed safety boots, something I would definitely recommend.

Setting the Stone

Stacking stone for the wall was like a puzzle. We learned to start with a layer of stone, anchored into the hillside by wedging into the dirt, stones, and crevices that already existed. Then a new row of stones would be placed on top making sure that the new layer overlapped the gaps between the layer directly below. We used smaller rocks as wedges and to fill larger gaps. A level was used to check the wall, and in some cases a hammer was used to help wedge stones together. Stone-by-stone the wall started coming together.

The class was only an afternoon, so we did not complete the wall within the time we had, but build enough to get the basics down. We used many of the techniques I learned in the class at Opus 40 to build the stacked stone wall for our Studio Build Project and shed several years later.

Get inspired to do it yourself with more projects in our DIY series.