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Steve Gray
Steve Gray
931 posts

Re: Stone Rowing: remember that?
Sep 11, 2003, 09:11
Remember, Nigel, you're talking to a carpenter. They know a thing or two about getting things to line up properly.

I built a house in '87 and managed to get a lot of salvaged oak flooring for it. The idea was to put 2" bearers on the concrete floors, fill in between with insulation and then lay the boards on top. I got a joiner in to help me (actually he was an ex ship's carpenter, but not Gordon). He asked me to get 25 metres of clear plastic tubing, which he filled with water to make a water level that would reach from a datum point to anywhere on the ground floor. A stick of wood with a line on it attached to the pipe was all he needed to take a level. HE then gave ME a job! He sent me to cut 2" squares of thin wood; plywood, hardboard, formica, etc., so that he had a range of different thicknesses of "packins" as he called them. As fast as I could make them he was using them up. We used hundreds of the damned things to level up the bearers and I was amazed just how bad the apparently flat concrete had been. When the floor was finished it was superb; perfectly flat and perfectly level right through the house. Imagine trying to go from room to room with a spirit level or even a laser level on a tripod. Even then they are not 100% accurate and each time you transfer the datum you incur some error. What could be more simple and more precise than a tube of water?

Back to stone-rowing. For what they weigh compared to the stone, you could have an assortment of wood blocks that ride along on top, just ready for a situation where there's some bad ground and a shortage of local stones for packing.
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