Like any craft, stone masonry has its own vocabulary, which can be confusing and daunting to the lay person. And like any craftspeople, we have developed our own collection of odd phrases and expressions. This glossary will help you to understand the unique way masons tend to communicate. Commonly accepted terms are italicized matchstick men online download

. The words that we’ve completely made up are found in bold fido online download . Be forewarned, masonry lingo varies substantially by region. E-mail us with any terms you’d like to see defined: marc (at) unturned (dot) net.

Crib wall or cribbing: Drystone walls that hold something up, such as a trail treadway or a set of steps, different from retaining walls that hold things back.

Edging: Stones dug into the ground and stood up on edge either as a structure to hold up a trail treadway or to provide a visual break between different features in a landscape.

Fluff-n-duff: The extra 5% that completes a trail, fluff-n-duff involves spreading leaf litter and other organic materials from the area over any cut banks or other exposed soil. In addition to making the site look more natural, this prevents destructive splash erosion and begins to seed the area with flora native to the habitat.

French fries calendar girls movie : Stones that are considerably longer than they are wide, most useful as tie-stones in a dry laid wall.

Gargoyle: A large ugly stone that guards a set of stone steps, keeping both the steps in place and the hiker on the trail. Gargoyles are always set stable but without a great tread.

Grout

: A mixture of mortar, sand and water that’s used to fill the joints in stone paving.

Live stone: In trail terms, this is stone found when digging that is continuous with the mountain. More often called ledge or ledgestone.

Persuader: A twelve pound sledgehammer, preferably painted gold.

Pop-tarts: Trail edging, because of the way stones stick out of the ground is similar to pop-tarts peeking out of a toaster.

Slurry: A mixture of mortar and water (no sand) painted onto the bottom of paving stones to increase adhesion to the mortar bed. Typically mixed in very small batches because of how quickly it sets. Messy as hell.

Stile: A set of steps that allows people but not livestock to climb over a wall. Stone stiles cantilever out of the face of a wall.

Treadway: Walking surface of a trail.

Trowel-fu: Ancient art of using a masonry trowel. Good trowel-fu helps to activiate the adhesive properties of mortar, promotes efficiency and reduces wear and tear on a mason’s wrist. Brick masons are the acknowledged masters of trowel-fu.

Whackamatizer: Once used to refer to rubber mallets used for pounding paving stones into place, the term has creeped into general usage as any kind of anything that can be used to hit things. There is also the verb form, ‘to whackamatize.’