Oh that’s not good...

Around here it’s everywhere I just call it fieldstone maybe it’s something else...may not be easy to get what I need from these stones...

Lots of old farm buildings and homes have this style of stone and quite a few are split faced stone..
Not sure how they did it’s years ago?

Yes its the black lines in the stone. If you do like the video and trace around the stone with a stone tracer or mason chisel it will eventual split where your tracing.

Back in the day, star drills, feathers and wedges were used to cut these slabs of Maine granite. We're talking one hundred and fifty to two hundred years ago. Many Maine homes rest on these granite foundations.

How big are the stones you intend to use and for what purpose?

Not sure what look you're after, I didn't want veneer or faux stone. I ended up with real fieldstone that is milled flat on one side, if you can find someone in your area that does it- I would highly recommend it.

Got a picture of the pudding stone, I would like to see it.
Jim

We call those rock obama rocks around here! Gobs of that red rock got dumped here in Ks by the glaciers, back in the day. I'm with T rex, they break, but any way they want to. Safest way to control it would be a diamond saw!

I’ve done it with some luck. Doesn’t always turn out perfect but just involves a hammer.. learned it from my great aunt who was a small woman bout 4’7” an 85-90 lbs dripping wet. It just involved lightly tapping the stone several times where you want it to break. Then one sharp quick blow an it split where tapped. She was much better at it than I was as her and my uncle built a beautiful home and she split all of the rock while he mix the cement in a wheel barrel and stack the stone

High quartz content igneous rocks like that pic are notoriously tough to flake. Tend to break randomly and crumble. Good luck!

When we were having our house built one of the excavators was an old guy who used to split stones.
He siad as mentioned before that you have to learn to read the stone.
He showed me on the rock wall that I built several stones and where to hit them to split them.

He was right, hit them where he told me and they split relatively easy.

He pointed out one dark colored stone and said "you'll have a hard time splitting that one. We used to leave those and not waste our time splitting them".
He called them "ni**er heads". I busted out laughing at that one.

No luck splitting stone yet..

Thanks all for posting..

Submerge them for a couple weeks. They split a lot easier.

get em wet and freeze em if ya really want to see them come apart.

You're going to need a saw. They will never split where you want them to. We have them all around, I carve a few names in them from time to time but splitting them is a way different thing.

When I was in my twenties I worked for a masonry contractor. We laid a lot of stone and most of it was locally sourced which meant sandstone, limestone and granite. All split fairly easily once you get the hang of it.

There are two ways to buy stone from a quarry; you can buy rubble which is irregularly shaped stone or you can buy ashlar which is square and rectangular stone ready to lay. Aslar is more expensive so we almost always got rubble and faced it ourselves. Some days all we would do was face rubble, get it ready to lay. After the first couple thousand you get to where you can read stone pretty well which saves a lot of labor.

My preferred weapons were a 3"- 4" toothed stone chisel and a 2 lb stone hammer with a 16" handle.

These are the barn stones I used on my fireplace at camp. My son and I hauled about 7 tons of them out of the woods ....old foundations of long gone homes. Sandstone. I was told by old timers that they pounded a bit into them and made a series of holes. Filled with water at let the ice break them off square. Then chisel them up clean.

Nice work
Thanks all

Found some stone at the Amish farm that is split.
Just a few, but I was wondering why it had been split
it dawned on me that they have been burning on top of the
Stone pile. Wondering if that may have caused some
of the stone to split? Lots of smaller stone pieces around
in the pile. Here is one I found that was spilt.
Just what I’m looking for a good face.

What are you using the stone for?

I’m building a timber frame style book shelf and around my window...Above the widow will be a slab and tv on the cycling...Below the window will be some slap shelving and was looking to mix stone along the bottom and mix it with the slabs...

Also been collecting cedar logs for a railing and would like to use some stone under my base newel post..
This stone will need to be thin but I want the face..kinda like this...

Like this

I’d like to do something similar to this on the wall but not that much stone...