Brick and stone working information

Happened across this site while looking for more castle information. It contains a lot of links having to do with stone working. Some of the links are redundant with information I've posted here, but the site is still easily worth a look. I noticed that the site is called SSRsi, the "Survival and Self Reliance Studies Institute". Why is it that many of the sites featuring do-it-yourself information pertaining to odd or older materials, or any serious level of getting off the grid/build your own green home always have New-age names and/or an anti-establishment feel that would drive away Mr. John Q. Public in a heartbeat? These sustainable architecture or "granola" -types (don't get me wrong, I agree with what they're trying to accomplish) love to say how great it is to live in earth-friendly dwellings and they can't understand why everyone doesn't live like they do, but presenting material with a "survivalist" pretense makes them their own worst enemy to their cause sometimes...

Gothic Arches

Everyone has likely seen beautiful carved stone arches in the Gothic or Medieval style. If you wanted to build a castle, you probably wouldn't mind having some of these included in your design. I'm sure you're capable of carving these yourself out of stone.... What's that? You're not a stonemason? Ok, just hire guy to spend a few hundred hours carving individual arches.... What now? You can't afford that? OK, here's my idea, cheaper and DIY:

First of all, building an arch for a window yourself does not alleviate your responsibility of making sure that it is structurally sound and meets all code requirements, and if you actually try to build one using my ideas and you get hurt, it's not my fault! These are just ideas!

After watching too many DIY shows and now the Mythbusters (they make all kinds of cool stuff in their pursuit of destruction...er, science, I mean) it seems the best way to make a nice decorative arch for a window would be to form one out of cement by using a mold of RTV or some similar material.

Now, there's no getting around the fact that you are going to have to make an arch, at least one yourself, that is exactly what you want. I'll have to leave the construction method up to you, but several ideas come to mind. Pour plaster into a cylinder or approximate shape of the arch segment you are constructing and carve it to the appropriate shape (time consuming and difficult to maintain the accuracy of alignment when done in segments). You could block together an arch out of craft or large foam blocks and carve that to the desired shape (easier and cheaper). You could also build the whole thing out of wood (not too easy, not too cheap, but very durable). Either way, you'll have to build it at least once, taking into account the structure it will sit in, appropriate room for supporting and installing glass and affixing the whole thing to the structure of the building.

Once you've built the window frame, (I'll assume wood for the sake of not writing three different versions), you'll want to make sure that it is precisely the trueness, shape and quality you want for your finished product. You'll be using it as mold. Every imperfection or error will come out in the end product.

Build a wooden form capable of surrounding your arch laid flat, the form must have two halves. Make sure it is strong enough to support cement and will not "blow out" due to the weight of the material. You'll need to look for a mold-making how-to online at this point, I could fill a couple of pages on how to make a mold like this; if I find one, I'll post it. EDIT: Here's a video You can scale it up and use more appropriate mold making materials to make it larger. Once your mold is made and you extract your original part, you'll be able to pour as many cement molds of your arch as you want. You could even lay re-enforcing bar or wire mesh inside the mold to have strong, reinforced cement in the end possibly capable of bearing structural loads. One could make large windows and incorporate a hollow frame to hide or place a structural support inside. You could create door frames, gargoyles, decorative wall caps, decorative heraldry, all out of cement; durable, beautiful, and limited only by your imagination and what you are willing to try.
I have noticed that some of the mold-making materials are somewhat pricey, but when you consider what it would cost to make these things out or real stone, the price is considerably more reasonable. I suppose if you were good at it, you could sell some of your creations and make some money on the whole thing!

Another how-to here.

The "mouth" or "face" arch picture is part of T. E. Breitenbach's Castle.

How to build an arch

Arches and castles seem to go hand-in-hand many times, and I've wondered how to build them. Most masonry books tend to build straight walls, walls with square openings for windows, or other basic structures. DIYinfo.org has some fairly basic information on how to build an arch with brick or wood. This information could be used to create a stone arch quite easily, but the fit of the stone would have to be pretty good if you were going to make it out of dry stone; and if you were to use mortar in the construction of it you'd still want a good fit, otherwise it'll be more mortar than stone.

EDIT: Dec 6, '07

Another description.

This particular segment of the site seems to be by far one of the most popular (over 20% of the dreamsofcastles.blogspot hits), so for everyone looking for archbuilding information I've dug up some more information. Hope it helps!

To build an arched doorway in your house using wall board:

Kit Method

Totally DIY

How a barrel vault was built in a house

Building a Medieval archway:

Simple BBC Animation on how it was done

Arched ceilings being built at Castlemagic.com: (beautiful work!)

Tunnel

With framework still in place

Various arch forms being used to build windows and doors during construction.

If you can find it and are interested in the historical construction of arches and vaults, I'd highly recommend getting your hands on The Construction of Gothic Cathedrals, by John Fitchen ($13.00 USD at the time of writing this on Amazon.com). The book contains lots of information on how vaults and arches were constructed out of stone using Medieval methods. All of the information could be simplified and applied to building an arch out of modern materials. It only has about 6 chapters and the rest is notes and definitions, but it covers vault types, formworks, centering, explanations and drawings very thoroughly.

Want to learn how to work dry stone?

I happened across this site called the "Dry Stone Conservancy" while looking for a suitable example about a how-to on building a stone arch. The DSC is all about preserving, repairing and promoting dry stonework; and they provide workshops as well to those of us that might be interested in learning the craft and applying it towards building something of our own someday. Worth a look.

Half-Timber and Castles

Most of us associate castles with solid, thick, stone walls and minimal exterior decoration; but there are a wide variety of buildings that bear the description of "castle" (as some of the buildings on this or Castle DuPont's site will prove). One of the ways to add to your castle's height without having to raise stone multiple stories is to build the upper floors in half-timber style. Many European castles use this method in some of the buildings, though obviously half-timber construction is not as resistant to attack as pure stone would be. Aesthetically speaking, the half-timber look may be more pleasing to the eye, depending on your preferences. It may be even more affordable than stone would be to the prospective owner-builder. While I couldn't find any "how-to" articles on building in a true half-timber style, after a little thinking is seems entirely possible to build a solid first floor (whether it be stone, ICF or other material with a stone facade) and then the second floor could be standard stick framing or SIP. This would provide a lighter and easier to work with material to the home-builder, and the half-timber could be applied as a facade as one would apply stucco and window frames. The photo is of Kaiserburg. Wikipedia has some interesting information on timber framing, as well.

Leaded (or "Stained") Glass

Leaded and stained glass are not always the same thing; leaded glass is simply the process of joining together panes of glass with lead caming, stained glass is the actual painting of colored vitreous material onto glass and then firing it to melt the two together. Solid colored glass is sometimes called "art" or "slag" glass, but can also be called "stained" glass. Some folks would like to have leaded or stained glass in their home or future castle and it can be anything form affordable to outrageous. Seeing as this site is all about DIY, I think that everyone could do it themselves to create basic leaded glass to hang in a window or to cover a window completely. Check this site out: Leaded Glass Panel Tutorial.

As you can see there are a few necessary tools and the designs can be quite simple. Fired stained glass is an entirely different story, requiring: vitreous paints, a high temperature oven capable of precise temperature control, basic leaded glass skills and the artistry needed to create a painting as a work of art. Probably not suitable for the average DIY'er due to the high skill, time, and tool investment required. The point of this is that a lot of folks associate leaded glass and Gothic/Ecclesiastical architecture with castles and would love to have a window or three that filter the sunlight into their home. There are a lot of resources available on the internet as far as supplies an how-to books that will help you get what you need. There are probably classes held by local schools or individuals that could help as well. Leaded glass is definitely a beautiful addition to any home, and something you can make yourself to boot.

Updated Links

Verified active links, transferred links from postings to link sections at bottom of page.

"Build Your Own Stone House" (book)

"Build Your Own Stone House: Using the Easy Slipform Method" by Karl and Sue Schwenke.

Finally I've read a decent amount of this book, and I have to say that I have enjoyed reading it so far. The author has an easygoing style that allows the writing to flow in an almost conversational way. There are humorous little "asides" that bring in events that happened during construction, such as forgetting to leave a hole in the foundation for a drain or the neighbor's visit that caused a smashed finger. The information presented is a blend between completely ditching modern conveniences and construction methods but using them when necessary. Truly you could go into the woods with your tools and build basic house with just this book if you had to (as long as you had access to cement, anyway; after all, it is the "Slipform Method"!). The author concentrates his examples on the basic rectangular house that he and his wife built, but provides methods and suggestions as to what you'd need to do to build something different. For example: The author chose to build a roof with a low pitch, but provides charts to adjust the angle to something different. He also provides different methods of laying the stone, whether it be coursed or rubble.

Other recommendations he does make throughout the book are to make sure you know local code, do the necessary research an planning on your site (such as siting of a well and waste systems, building on proper soil types, alignment of the building to sunlight, etc...), use local agencies as required for things like water testing or soil testing, and if you're not sure of what you are doing, get the knowledge from someone who knows how to do it right. No need to have the building fall apart on you, especially when you're inside.

Contact Me

Someone said that they found no way to contact me on the blog. I hadn't really thought about it, but now that it appears to be necessary I should provide some means. Place a comment to this posting to contact me. All comments are moderated, so I'll see it. I'm sorry I can't provide an email address, but the last thing I need is some bot trolling the blogs looking for email addresses finding mine so I wind up with even more spam in my mailbox...

Dry spell

Well, I haven't made too many posts lately. It would appear that I've found most all, if not all, of the owner built castles that are currently available on the web via popular search engines. Having kept an eye on the site almost daily, it seems that the all-time high of daily visitors was around 20 and has leveled off to around 6-8 per day. I really was never sure how much traffic a site like this would generate, so I guess I'm pleased that anyone is stopping by at all. There are a lot of search terms used that lead folks to this site, the most common are people looking for a few of the popular castles like DuPont castle, and the rest is a mish-mash of search terms that have to do with building castles from stone or other modern materials. This is kind of surprising in a way, because it means that there are several people that would like to know how to build a modern castle. That's great! I wish I had more concrete information to give the searchers, especially along the lines of "this is how I did it...".

I've also had a couple of inquiries from material vendors that have found the site and are interested in telling me about their wares. I always write back, but it appears that they haven't really looked at the site too closely; especially the parts of it that essentially say that I have no money... Funny, once they hear that they never write me back! So for vendors that happen across the site, don't run away! I'm happy to take information about your product as long as you can provide specifics as to how it may be applied to modern castle building, exactly how it would be done with your product and what benefit or support you, your product, or your company would provide an owner builder.

At some point, I'll put together a "standard castle" model with floors, square footage, exterior windows, walls, and doors. Differing materials can be applied to the structure so it can be used as standard cost gauge for walls, foundation, and floors is in a rough cost per square foot output.

As always, if anyone knows of a castle that is currently being built by the owners or owner-builders that are living in their own castle, I'd be happy to hear about it.