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Watched a mason in Savannah rebuild a 150-year-old retaining wall last month and it hit me how much we lost with modern methods
He didn't use any mortar just dry stacked the whole thing with this crazy precision cutting each brick by eye and I gotta ask how many of you still do dry stack work or is everybody just mixing mud these days?
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wood.noah6d ago
Bet that wall outlasts anything slapped together with mortar and wire mesh these days. There's something about trusting the weight and the cut alone to hold it together that feels like a lost art.
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mila_sullivan6d ago
I used to think dry stacking was just laziness or a way to cut corners. But then I helped a neighbor repair an old field wall that had been standing since the 1800s with no mortar at all, just careful fitting. Seeing how each stone locked into the next with nothing but gravity and patience changed my whole view. There is a real skill to picking the right shapes and not rushing the fit, that wall will probably be there another hundred years.
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