Here is a short video I made for anyone interested in trying cracking a stone with wedges. The titles are in Finnish, but images are pretty self explanatory. Here it is:
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Breaking the Stone ...continued
Here we are.
The chunks of the stone are still too big to be moved easily. They sure can be moved with long logs of wood. No easy piecy job because of the house and other rocks in the way.
Then I found out about the smart solution!
Someone told me to try stone wedges (kivikiila).
I found out that within 50 km there is a company selling imported Japanese stone wedges. They are pretty expensive though. Then after some more surfing on the internet I read that there is a blacksmith who makes stone wedges less than two kilometers from my home. Fantastic. He turned out to be a very nice man who also gave me instructions on how to use the wedges. I bought six handmade wedges with a reasonable price. I needed to buy a drill too and realized that I could buy a new one with less money than the rent for one day. When using wedges the holes need to be only 20 mm wide and about 10 cm deep. Drilling is no longer a drag.
Here are some pictures of the wedges in place and another one showing the line of fracture.
Drilling one hole takes about five minutes. When the wedges are in place all one needs to do is tap them one by one using only a little force. You can hear the stone making cracking sounds just before it breaks in half. No harmful chemicals, instant action and clean cut that opens up because of the shape of the wedges. Definitely worth of trying!
That's it. Thanks for checking out my blog page.
The chunks of the stone are still too big to be moved easily. They sure can be moved with long logs of wood. No easy piecy job because of the house and other rocks in the way.
Then I found out about the smart solution!
Someone told me to try stone wedges (kivikiila).
I found out that within 50 km there is a company selling imported Japanese stone wedges. They are pretty expensive though. Then after some more surfing on the internet I read that there is a blacksmith who makes stone wedges less than two kilometers from my home. Fantastic. He turned out to be a very nice man who also gave me instructions on how to use the wedges. I bought six handmade wedges with a reasonable price. I needed to buy a drill too and realized that I could buy a new one with less money than the rent for one day. When using wedges the holes need to be only 20 mm wide and about 10 cm deep. Drilling is no longer a drag.
Here are some pictures of the wedges in place and another one showing the line of fracture.
Drilling one hole takes about five minutes. When the wedges are in place all one needs to do is tap them one by one using only a little force. You can hear the stone making cracking sounds just before it breaks in half. No harmful chemicals, instant action and clean cut that opens up because of the shape of the wedges. Definitely worth of trying!
That's it. Thanks for checking out my blog page.
Breaking the Stone
Now this is interesting.
Here is the stone. It is a nice stone, good shape and size too. About the size of a Fiat 600. But! It is in the wrong place. I need to get rid of it. How to do it? Here I am going to tell you the methods I tried and how I finally found out how to do it nice and easy. Yes, now you can try it too.
Ok. Why not use explosives?
That was pretty much out of question. The stone is less than half a meter from the wall of the summer cottage. Someone would probably be able to blast it into dust without breaking the windows of the old house. But since the location is on an island and not so easily accessible I decided to do it myself. Even though I had no experience in stone cracking.
I remembered hearing that it is possible to break the stone using expanding chemicals. I found out that they have it in the local hardware store. Here it has a nickname "etanadynamiitti" or snail dynamite. It is not cheap stuff.
Then I needed to rent a drill. A BIG drill to make holes of 70 -80 cm. deep (they need to be at least 60 to 70 % of the diameter of the stone) and 32 mm. wide. The rent for the equipment for one day was seventy euros. I spent one day drilling four holes into the stone. Then I filled the holes with snail dynamite and went back home and waited for the stone to break. Since the weather was only a couple of degrees over freezing point it took weeks before something started to happen. Here is a picture of the drill and one to show the first cracks.
What a disappointment! I expected the rocks to fall down but instead they were still close and tight together.
After some more drilling and more snail dynamite the stone started to come apart. Sure I could continue with this method but I really wanted things to happen more quickly. Finally here is a shot of the stone cracked in several pieces. See how one of the slabs is leaning against the wall. That's how close it is.
...to be continued
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