Stone Salvage

Originally Posted by huntsman

I have been salvaging old building stone (some it is cut and dressed) from a town dumping area near home. I've gotten probably 6,000 lbs of it. I will probably use it for my own projects, but I have a dim memory of people talking about gathering stone for sale. Does anyone else pick any stone?

Me and a bud used to get slate from up the Coquihalla long before they put in the toll highway. We called it Mountain Brown and it was bringing in $200.00 ton probably worth double that now.

When I lived on the rock, Vancouver Island found some nice gold flecked slate and some salmon green slate at another location but never mined any as I was busy hijacking cedar off of the beaches for shake blocks at $800.00 a cord. There's some beautiful old cedar logs in the water shed if you have the balls.

Anyhow back to the slate, not many guys know this and when installing slate will start from the bottom and work, if you work from the top down any loose mortar falls to the ground keeping your already installed work clean and the final clean up a snap.

Working with stone is dynamite on hands and clothing, we used to charge for he slate then $4.50 a square ft to install. You can make some decent money at it especially if you have your own source for the slate and take the time to learn how to split it into veneer.

To split granite you'll need whats called feathers and wedges, which are inexpensive to purchase. You can also split granite during the winter months by filling your drilled holes with water then let it freeze. The later is a cheap way to break up a large rock from your backyard into more manageable pieces, where time is of no great importance.