Dry Stone Wall Construction
Channel: LimeWorks.us
Date: 23/03/2012

Dry stacked stone expert, Neil Rippingale discusses the efforts of the Dry Stone Conservancy to restore a historic stone wall at Hopewell Furnace in Pennsylvania.

Transcript: 
My name is Neil Rippingale, I'm the training program manager for the Dry Stone Conservancy. We're a nonprofit organization based in Lexington Kentucky and we travel all over the United States training and promoting the craft of dry stonework. This is a retaining wall and the reason for this retaining wall, this was all one field going back in 1772- 1771 there about. What they actually found here Mark Bird established the iron furnace here at Hopewell and to power the furnace with oxygen for the furnace, there was a headrace here this is called the east headrace. On this headrace here there was water running down this swell here and it ran about a mile. All the way from up in the woods there, and running a mile. A great piece of engineering, all the way down there all about six inches of water ran at a time and that was sufficient to power a twenty three foot wooden wheel that actually powered the ballers on a piston basis and it was absolutely incredible so that fired the furnace. So there is a great piece of history here. While we're doing the workshop, the National Park Service Jeff Finch actually does the philosophy of preservation as well and by that it shows us the character defining features of when this was actually refurbished in 1939. It was done by the CCC, the Conservation Trust did this work and it was a bit suspect at the time and what it really needs is a cap on the top here. But what we call the character defining features, we have to leave it the way that we found it with respect to the masons and some quality as well. But really covers what we've been doing here and when we first came here we couldn't actually see this project it was all covered with weeds and vegetation. But you can now see the swell back the way it was back in the 1700s. The dry stone work especially in America there's been a lot of Scots and Irish who brought the skills over through the Appalachian Trail. The Scots and the Irish came down the Appalachian Trail, the brought their recipes, they brought their music, they brought their skills, and they settled in Kentucky predominately with a lot of work there around Lexington where we're actually based. There's a tremendous amount of stonework there, it's the same geology in Tennessee as well so we've actually used the same techniques the Irish traveled all over with the Scots as well. So it's predominately international. I think there's a great future for young people and I think  they should keep their minds open to dry stone work. If you can start off with the basics, with a single face like this wall here then you can advance into doing freestanding walls. There's one in Australia we built was twenty two feet high and it was eight feet at the base. It was an architectural statement but there was sixteen tons in a linear yard. So keeping your mind open to new ideas, working with landscape architects and engineers. Work with old and new, they're a great combination there. And check out our website at drystone.org.