These are 1/2" wedges, this material splits pretty easily so the smaller wedges work well. I will be getting bigger wedges for bigger blocks eventually.
That was a very distinct change in tone, once it was about to split. Quite interesting! Love seeing this kind of work. Greeting from Germany and good luck with your new channel!
Morgan help him with a song something like "My buddy Morgan" he lives just down the road. He`s a wizard with the ducks, He just hates hound hunting fucks, And we make the world a beeeeetter place.
watching this vid was not only educational, but also sooo meditative. the sounds were so soothing and relaxing and I think it really must be such a satisfaction, when you start to hear those subtle cracks before finally the split opens up. and it is just so amazing to see, what one guy with a drill and a hammer can do - without any heavy machinery, destroying all the area around. Really looking forward to many more videos from you 😊
Great Video! Thanks for the demonstration. My grandfather was a stone mason from Germany. In the 30's he worked on the Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale. I have a 20" round stone that is full of red garnet. I was thinking of using a diamond saw to cut around the circumference to try to split it. I'm thinking now to get a set of feathers and wedges and trying that instead.
The double tapping provides a perfect rhythm with the music you chose. Listening to you strike the fetters and wedges was so soothing and I could actually hear the changes in the sounds as the stone got closer to breaking the final sound was magical. I have always loved the end products of stone work, but I have never seen and heard it done before. To be honest I thought it took tremendous brute strength and ugly sounds. But seeing you work, I see nothing but artistry and music. There seems to be almost the need to feel a oneness with the stone. It was very inspiring. I wish that I was young and healthy, I would love to cut the stones for my own raised garden beds myself. I do some wood carvings and turning and it requires the same meditative approach. Sometimes as I am working, it feels like my hands are smarter than my head. As if my hands became one with the wood and knew how to bring the final desired shape out of the wood without forcing the wood. I know that that sounds crazy, but it’s just what I experience when I am working. When I look at the final product I feel such awe, because I know that I have just created something far beyond my own skills. I feel a relationship with the finished product that is worth more than any amount of money and so am I never willing to sell my work. It would be like selling my children. Thank you so much. This video was both very enlightening and very very satisfying. May God always bless the work of your hands Alfred.
i wish i could have seen these vids a year ago - together with a contractor buddy of mine with an excavator we installed 100 linear feet of salvaged granite curbstone in my front landscape, and some of this stone dressing action would have been great to know.
Fascinating Alford ! Very artistic. Never knew what and how a piece of granite turned into a beautiful piece of work and what all would be involved in starting it.
Good luck Alfred with your new quarry. I look forward to watching you do your thing! This may sound weird but I do stained glass and your splitting the granite seemed as satisfying as scoring and breaking a piece of glass. When it goes just right there is relief and gets the creative juices flowing. Is that sort of how you feel in your work?
Heya Alfred! Thanks for the video and also from all of us in the gold Shaw farm youtube family we wish you they best of luck on all your future endeavors and also those bucket list things you wanna get too!
Just came over from gold shaw farm. This is so interesting. That was so cool listening and watching you crack apart that huge rock. The littlest things in life could be so peaceful to watch and hear. It's pretty neat for me to listen to it because I'm supposed to wear hearing aids , and I don't lol but when I'm watching this I wear my earbuds and I can hear the rock and everything crack and it's so cool to hear those sounds . The littlest things in life huh lol Thank you for sharing your video, I'm looking forward to watching more.🤗
My impression is that part of the hammer drills advantage is it’s rotation which helps clear the face of the hole of cuttings, leading to a cleaner strike. By hand, your chisel is often striking cuttings within the hole. In my business we typically use water or mud (a slurry really) to clean cuttings from the hole and cool the bit.
I'm pretty sure you're correct, after rotating the bit it would take a couple strikes to get through the resulting dust before I was hitting stone again. I need to get compressed air up there for a variety of reasons, but in this case it would have been helpful to clear the hole. I assume you drill wells of some type?
That was delightful to watch! The crunchy sound the stone made just before falling open was awesome. I was worried the side closest to you was going to fall onto your feet, so I was surprised to see how little any of it moved. Is there a way to predict how pieces will settle once they come free? I could listen to all these sounds for a long time. Very cool to hear how they change.
You get a sense of what they will do once they split. You can also generally hear the stone get ready to go, when it starts sounding hollow it's time to inventory your fingers and toes, then make sure that they are in a safe place
My dad needed to fragment a huge flat bolder so he could move it to make way for a new garden. He had watched his father split a large stone with a half stick of dynamite. They used a chisel to bore a hole and packed the dynamite with clay. My grandfather lit the fuse and casually stepped back a few steps while my grandmother freaked out. They barely heard the thud and the stone split nicely. So my father resolved to do the same to split his boulder. After we finished boring the hole with a chisel, my dad was unable to procure any dynamite. Times change. I still have the boulder with the bore hole and I'm going to keep it. All this came to mind while I watched you split that stone. I wondered if you ever work with low explosives in your stone work?
This is one of my favourite videos on granite splitting. Music , footage, the way you speak , everything is very educative and inspiring . Congratulations! .. I'm gonna buy a set of 1/2 " feathers and wedges to start cutting granite at my homestead up here in the Serra da Mantiqueira, Brazil's southeast . Just two questions : How long does it take to drill each of this hole? Can I use a common vidia drill ? Thanks a lot 🎉
This is facinating!! I always wondered how people were able to get stone more manageable. Have you ever done stone carving for art? Or is it all for like materials. How do you get power out in the woods? Generator? How long can a process take? And how can you tell which stone is worth "harvesting" Sorry for so many questions, but this stuff is so cool! I also like watching people do blacksmithing. Would love to see what you do with the stone! Cheers to joining youtube, glad GS Farms showed this. I had to see morr
I have only dabbled a very little bit with carving, I started cutting a compass rose years ago. I have a small generator that I bring up there, the quarry is over a mile from power lines so I need to stay off grid. A split without distractions can probably be completed in 15-20 minutes, (tracing, drilling, setting the wedges, and splitting) I have a series of videos in mind of projects using this granite.
@@vermontheritagegranitecomp2062 that is so cool!! I really appreciate the information!! Surprised it takes as little time as that. Looks like you can get s lot done in a day then! Can't wait to see more! Cheers and great job again.
Hey, Alfred! Like others, came from GSF so already a fan. If I may offer a suggestion: Don’t talk to us like you’re instructing a class but more like we’re family or friend hanging out w/you. No need to tell us every step you’re going to do beforehand. Just jump right into it. Like, “We’re going to split this here granite down the middle in 4 steps: Measure, Chisel, Drill, Wedge.” And then, just do it. Play music like you did, only stopping to give important tips, like not hitting the wedges too hard was a good one. Or don’t stop at all, and do voice over for tips or even write it on the screen. I know you’re new to YT, and I got the impression you weren’t super-comfortable talking while doing, hence my suggestion. Could be mistaken or could be bc it’s new. Either way, hope it’s helpful. Look forward to seeing more. Oh! And don’t forget to tell us what you do w/all that stone. Sell it to companies? People? Make stuff out of it? I’m not sure what a quarry does.
I really appreciate the feedback, I expect a bit of a learning curve as I figure out this content creation. Hoping to hit my stride sooner rather than later!
@@vermontheritagegranitecomp2062 Of course! I think you’ll pick it up pretty quickly. One more thing … Your channel avatar (to the left of your reply). It’s so faint you can hardly see nor read it. Maybe put it in bold or make it darker somehow; or put a background color behind it, like black, silver or even a slate color just so it’s more prominent. Again, a suggestion. Hope I’m not inundating you.
@@vermontheritagegranitecomp2062 Morgan directed me here. I enjoyed your videos and am looking forward to more. I'm fascinated by stonework, but I find it a bit intimidating because it seems very unforgiving. I'm more of a woodworking guy. If you're new to making trades related videos, you may want to check out Essential Craftsman's (Scott Wadsworth) channel for ideas and inspiration. He has a second channel, EC2 where in very early videos, he and his videographer/editor son, Nate have spoken about their content creation process. He makes great use of background music, multiple camera angles, increased camera speed during repetitive tasks, and studio voice-overs when explaining something that's being done on a noisy job site. Both you and Scott have a very laid back and soft spoken way of speaking and seem very comfortable on camera. I wish this channel and your quarry enterprise all the best.
For wood splitting i have seen since a few years some plastic/rubber lips that you put over the chisel to reduce the impact of the hammer if you miss ... granted these days you might not need it anymore but it might be helpful ^^
My poor hand has made it through the learning curve. I used to routinely pummel it with a hammer. These days, fortunately, I seldom miss. That was my first bad misstrike of the season, and it was late September!
I enjoyed that immensely! Question, what happens if you hammer the wedge all the way in and it doesn’t cleve? Is that when you start hammering on the end pieces? Do you apply a judicial force with a breaker bar or 5? Or do you just get a bigger hammer, xD (That’s an industry wide joke for all you non construction types.) I’m a commercial sculptor from Florida, so the hardest stuff I have experience with is concrete, pine, and EPS foam. Utterly fascinated by this! (Gold Shaw fan; “My Buddy Alfred” is my favorite earworm,…)
Very good video. Question: once you have marked the ideal split line, would taking a saw and cutting down 4" along the line help the rock fracture straighter? I've never tried this. It just struck me as a possibility
Any tips for splitting granite stone that is mostly buried but protrudes above the surface? I find that the rock tends to break off in thin layers and the crack does not migrate downwards. I’m in VT as well, NEK.
Could you attach a string to all the feather and wedges so you don't have to go looking for them afterwards? Maybe even store them that way ,so you only have to string them once... might need a hole in them or somehow attach a loop.
@@LarryDickman1 Yes I have, my dad taught me to use one. Are you mocking my age or my dad (don't go there)? While I don't split stone (let alone with a star drill) I do a lot of woodwork with hand tools and enjoy the connection with past craftsmen. If you want to mock me for that go ahead, but someday you will learn.
My Buddy Alfred!! He lives on down the road! He's a wizard with machines a genius in blue jeans let's stop and say hello! My Buddy Alfred!! Vermont's best so-and-so! Brick laying engineer surgeon driving heavy gear Ain't nothing he don't know!
Hi, awesome video. If I use 5/8 wedges, should I use 1/2 drill bit? I am afraid if I use 5/8 bit, I can risk the wedges going all the way into the rock without the rock splitting. Also is it a lot more challenging to hit the wedges sideways? In the video you just hammered the wedges on the top surface. My granite rock stands tall and have a very narrow top. I will have no choice but to do most of the hammering sideways.
@@leungfy1 stop hitting the wedges and let the rock react to the internal pressure. Hard to say how long maybe 30 sec. to a minute. In larger operations they have multiple splitting operations going at the same time. Going to the next stone is how they pause and wait. Going down the line of set ups and then returning to the 1st. Patience Padawan.
The tops of the feathers curve outwards, I try to place them in the hole so that the curve starts just above the top of the hole. My goal is to ensure that the feathers are completely in contact with the stone, if they are too deep then the curve will kind of hold them off the wall of the drilled hole.
