cutting fieldstone corners

[forgeblast]

Hi all, I am stripping the house of its "stucco" and then painted stucco that was chipping. I have found a lot of reasons why it was chipping and realized that the stucco was to hid poor block laying.
To counter this i am putting fieldstone over the exposed block (we have an a-frame that has a walk out basement on one side).
Well i have 10 outside corners (widows 6, corners of the house 4). Besides overlapping the stone is there an easy way to cut the fieldstone so that it will sit and overlapp the corners.
In my head i picture the veneer stone products that have that sideways L shape but thats not always easy to do with the stone. just wondering if anyone had any tricks.
thanks in advance.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Hi all, I am stripping the house of its "stucco" and then painted stucco that was chipping. I have found a lot of reasons why it was chipping and realized that the stucco was to hid poor block laying.
To counter this i am putting fieldstone over the exposed block (we have an a-frame that has a walk out basement on one side).
Well i have 10 outside corners (widows 6, corners of the house 4). Besides overlapping the stone is there an easy way to cut the fieldstone so that it will sit and overlapp the corners.
In my head i picture the veneer stone products that have that sideways L shape but thats not always easy to do with the stone. just wondering if anyone had any tricks.
thanks in advance.

It it's a sandstone then I would think a diamond blade in a quicksaw like a Stihl 570 would make quick work of it. PA makes me think granite and that's a whole nother thing. Then you're looking at wanting to talk to someone with a commercial stone countertop saw table set up.

 

[forgeblast]

we are almost all sandstone. we have great bluestone, infact my neighbor used to have a quarry. Ill check on that, i have a small electric tile cutter...i forgot all about that, thanks and appreciate the info.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

we are almost all sandstone. we have great bluestone, infact my neighbor used to have a quarry. Ill check on that, i have a small electric tile cutter...i forgot all about that, thanks and appreciate the info.

You can rent a concrete quicksaw with a diamond blade. Have someone hold water on the cut to keep down the dust and lessen blade wear.

 

[sweettractors]

When I was in my early teens, I stayed a lot at my Grandfathers farm during summer vacations. I helped him put a field stone verneer on his home. As we were doing the job, we would save back rocks that had smooth edges and rocks that would work good on corners and around windows. We used lots of metal brick ties back to the wood surface we were covering. We just used roofing nails to hold the ties. How would you tie your fieldstone to the block you are covering? Ken Sweet

 

[Egon]

[, i have a small electric tile cutter.../QUOTE]

If that is one of under 100 dollar units it may not have sufficient power.

Angle grinder with a stone blade works well but will be slow.

 

[forgeblast]

I was driving around looking at some buildings near us and i basically saw two ways that corners were handled. one was to make the entire corner a full mortar joint. I dont think i like this too much unless its protected pretty well with an overhang. The others seem to have that L cut in them. I have some stone that is close to being right, i have an angle grinder that I will try to use, its a smaller 4'', i might have to borrow a bigger one. Thanks for the input...also the tile cutter was that 100.00 deal.
sorry forgot to say that the field stone is going over a block wall that is covered in a thin layer of portland, it did have cement paint on top of it but i am wire brushing it off. Tried sandblasting, took way to long. If you think of our house as a square with an aframe on top, we have on the right side a walk out basement (about 8' showing, the left side only has 2' showing. I started with the back of the house first, to make all my mistakes there first. I am fitting them as close as i can and then filling in larger spaces with smaller stones, i have a mortar bag(looks like a cooking icing bag) that i will fill everything in when i am done.
My basic work day is to put as much stone as i can (1-2 bags of mortar or until i run out of stone), then i go and haul more stone. This involves cleaning the stones so that the mortar can ahear, and testing them to see if they will sit flat against the wall. once that is done all the rejected pieces get hauled to the stone wall area and placed. The keeper stones for the wall are sized as following 1. small 2. hand size, 3. two hand, 4 large, 5 ex large. I do this to keep my work area neat, and its easy to measure with your hand what you need to fill in an area. Once i am done cleaning the sorting the stone i go over the stones i have placed with a paintbrush to clean off any mortar that may be on the face. Ill get out there to take some pics tonight.
When i was sandblasting, i had some sand come up under my glasses and face shield my eye is pretty sore now. I see why the hoods are so important.

this shows the stucco/cement paint getting taken off.

part of the wall

how i size the stone

close up of the stone.

 

[PA hayseed]

That looks like brown sandstone to me, and it is easier to work than the white stuff. I've been playing with stone on and off for over a year now, so I feel your pain with that time consuming process. My buddy who is a mason told me about the diamond blade thing too for the corners. Some stones could probably be worked with a chisel to fine tune them. If you do any serious amount of chiseling, take my advice and buy carbide chisels. You can get them many places, like trow and holden (online). They are great to deal with, and will talk to you about your project. There are also carbide hammers, drills, bits, etc. Nothing made of carbide is cheap. It made a world of difference for me.

You could also get masonry grinding wheels for your 4.5 inch grinder, they seem to be fairly inexpensive.

You already seem to be on your way, I would only caution you not to use too thick of a stone. It won't likely stay without a footer under it. I have about 10 tons of stone still sitting in my yard to work with, but have the rest of my life to get the jobs done.

I would think that type s mud or just a portland mix will work. I don't think I would use the regular, especially in the low areas where the water is going to be ( especially winter months with snow drift and melt).

boy oh boy, look at all those joints you are going to have to work. Wish you luck in figuring out the right mix for that. Took me forever to figure out the right consistency for my stone work. Most of my stuff I have done so far is dry laid, with the capstones getting mud to keep the monkey from knocking them off. I have to break up my leftover boulders to get my veneer stone. They make a machine that "chops" rocks, but it is way too expensive to buy for one project. In your neck of the woods there should be a quarry that may run some pieces through for you. There is a snadstone quarry about 40 miles from me, but they aren't exactly helpful.

Nice work so far. Enjoy the rest of your summer.

 

[forgeblast]

Ill check out those carbide chisels, most splitting i do is along the grain with a brick set and a mini hand sledge or an estwing.
I forgot to say im using type s mortar figured it would give me a bit more protection.
Lots of joints but i didnt get to put in the small stones to fill them in. I keep going in and adding more stone until there are very little joints. The mortar bag works great.
I did buy a couple boxes of the nitril gloves from hf, i wear them all the time when working with the stones. Keeps the lime from eating into my hands.
Our sandstone in this area is nice holds well. the bluestone comes out very nice.
A geo class i took described this whole area as sandstone, and then you can break that down into mudstone, sandstone, cologomerants etc. It was deposited by glaciers, and a lot of the stone has ripples and shapes in it from when it was deposited.
This is a lot easier project then the fieldstone garden shed (8x10 that im working on) ill post some pics once i get the next windows in.
later all
thanks for the info.