Using the right tools and the right technique

It wasn’t a first for Chris Pascoe. He was on a job when an architect told Pascoe he was unsatisfied with a previous contractor’s stone work. At first glance, Pascoe knew it was all wrong.

“They didn’t know what they were doing because it was horrible, it was terrible,” he says. “But it was trying to be sold to the architect as a new style of rock facing. I just looked at him and laughed because it was clear the person who did it didn’t have the right tools, didn’t have enough material for the overhang and they had to dress the stone.”

Pascoe wasn’t being a snob. As a master stone mason, he knows what looks right.

A native of England, Pascoe did an apprenticeship at Gloucester Cathedral, a shooting site for the Harry Potter movies. And he studied every aspect of masonry – cutting and carving, working with clients, the science of geology – in college, before he came to the states to work on the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. Since the age of 16, he’s dedicated his life to the profession, and now as one of three owners of Tri-R-Stone in Garfield Heights, Ohio, he’s determined to continue to be an advocate for it.

Last year, Pascoe started teaching stone clinics for landscapers through the Ohio Landscape Association. As more companies take on the stone aspect of design/build projects, Pascoe felt it was important that they really understand how to go about using the material.

In his clinic, Pascoe teaches how to differentiate the materials, how much material should be used, what tools to use and industry terminology.

“A lot of people, they look at a piece of sandstone and they say, ‘That’s limestone.’ It’s like, ‘No,’” Pascoe says. “There are different characteristics that they’ll be shown to look for when trying to identify the piece of material they’re going to be working with.”

Understanding the stone is essential in order to properly cut it and design a project. Limestone and sandstone, which are mainly what Pascoe sees contractors using in his region, are sedimentary rocks, but if you break a piece off and actually look closely at the stone, they’ll look different. If you break open Indiana limestone, for instance, Pascoe says, bits of shells and acorn cups will probably be visible from how it was naturally formed. If you crack open sandstone, those grains aren’t visible.

There are a lot of technical aspects that come into play when working with stone, including using the proper tools. Pascoe says one of the mistakes he sees contractors make when using man-made products from companies like Unilock or VERSA-LOK, is they use brick chisels designed for splitting bricks and not to dress and rock face stone.

Pascoe recommends every contractor’s tool bag should have: pitching tools, drafting tools, a claw hammer, a plug and feathers and punch tools.

“That’s really what the landscapers need in their tool bag,” Pascoe says. “It’s not a tremendous amount of tools, but for what a lot of contractors do, they’ll find their quality of work will really come up.”

The author is associate editor at Lawn & Landscape. She can be reached at clawell@gie.net.