How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls: Design and Build Walls, Bridges and Follies Without Mortar

I own multiple reference books on this subject. This book is a must have-an excellent resource of knowledge on dry stone walling.

This is by far the best book on the market for dry stone walling. A must have for the beginner and experienced stone masons. I love the dry stone bridges

My son and daughter-in-law say it will be very useful to them when finishing their backyard.

Great pictures- good information!

Well produced. CM

Our son has gotten a new hobby-building stone walls. He found this book very useful.

Beautiful photos, inspiring to read the text.

It’s a good book for a summary of walls. Just don’t expect step by step instructions

Tolles Buch und viel Inspiration für Trockendteinmauerbau.

Well written practical book. Very informative on the basics fora novice.

Having dabbled in ¨dry stane dyking¨ in Scotland and elsewhere many years ago, I got this book for myself to assist and encourage me to tackle some dry stone projects in my retirement. It is very informative for all levels of anyone interested in this subject. It is well written with excellent diagrams and phopgraphic images...and a good read. Wish I had it years ago!

I was looking for ideas of non traditional fences for a property I have and found this book to be quite helpful.

I live in North Cork, Ireland, where a lot of the older rural infrastructure is dry stone architecture and it makes a lot of sense to reuse the free rock strewn all over the land (especially with the price of cement nowadays!). Our government provides a range of subsidised training courses, and having taken those I was looking for a 'crib notes' book with pictures and reminders of the small things you are taught that you'll likely forget if you're not building dry stone forms regularly. I bought all the most popular books on dry stone walling, and I'll apologise in advance to my fellow Irish authors of some of those books, but this book by a Canadian is by far the best of all of them if you specifically want everything dry stone only. John Shaw-Rimmington's book has oodles of pictures of finished walls, buildings and bridges, plus plenty of pictures of them being built in stages. On that, no other book I bought comes remotely close, and for that alone anybody wanting a crib notes book you ought to buy this. Still, you might notice the four star rather than five star rating, because this book isn't perfect either: 1. For me personally, it spends too much time on artistic rather than functional dry stone architecture. I don't particularly have much interest in what rich people can afford to build as status demonstrations. I personally am building dry stone walls to save money and because they have ultra low long term maintenance. I am not building dry stone anything to show off, just for the sake of it because I have too much money and time, or because I own thousands of acres of land and I feel a need to fill it with follies. I completely appreciate that much of the author's income comes from such commissions, and many no doubt look cool and would appeal to arty types, but that isn't my use case. I dry stone wall because it's cheap and easy over the long term, if time consuming during actual wall construction. 2. The pages spent covering yet another wealthy person's artistic demonstration of their status could have been spent instead on proper building technique. That section ideally ought to have been written by students, so maybe one by a junior student, another by a mid experienced student, and finally one short of a master mason but getting there. All the stuff they've just learned and realised which a master mason has forgotten is not obvious to the less experienced. Like, for example, how best to use and deploy hearting stone - you must not use small shrapnel as it weakens the wall over time, but bigger shrapnel can strengthen the wall over time. What shapes and forms should good shrapnel take? What size relative to the stones used in the wall? I know all that is 101 basic dry stone walling, but it's also the stuff that you forget without practice, and a whole chapter dedicated to that alone with pictures would have greatly improved this book. 3. If you really wanted to wow me, a comprehensive survey of failed walls, and how and why they failed with pictures, that would be amazing. Most well built dry stone walls will last fifty years with very little maintenance. But there are some around me here in North Cork that I know for a fact haven't seen a human hand in two hundred years. I know enough about dry stone walling that I can partially see why from inspection - the people who built that wall were very experienced and there are lots of little touches here and there which other walls don't have which dramatically increased their longevity. Maybe that asks too much of any author - still, a survey of walls which failed within a decade and why would add lots of value. 4. Finally, the book shows many, many forms of dry stone wall, but it doesn't get into the differences of how to build them. For example, slate laid horizontally requires different technique to field stone laid vertically. Or, if you use an earth core for a wall so pretty wildflowers can grow out through the holes in the wall. Or how best to dress a stone (i.e. chisel it to shape), which the book doesn't touch at all, and that is definitely hard to the less experienced than master masons think it is - I often end up cracking mine just before they're done and ruining them due to poor technique and poor understanding of a stone's strengths and weaknesses. As much as the book could be better, it is still the best of all the books I bought and read if you exclusively care about dry stone walling. I would strongly recommend also taking at least a beginner's two day introductory course to dry stone walling, you'll learn more in those first two days than you'd think.