My Boulders are Calving

Today I had fun with some new tools. My feathers and wedges arrived from Amazon. I bought a set of 10.

A wedge is really basically the same thing as a masonry nail, except it’s bigger. A feather is a tapered piece of metal that flanks the wedge. There is one feather on each side of the wedge, and the wedge slides between them.

You drill a hole in a rock you want to split, and you push your wedge and feathers into it. After drilling several holes in a line and putting wedges into all of them, you bop the wedges with a small sledge. As they tighten up, they force the rock apart. Before you know it, the rock splits. It’s hilarious. It’s not hard at all. A long-handled sledge would be too big for the job. You use a little one, like a blacksmith’s hammer.

I have a lot of rocks in my yard, and I hate them, so I am removing them. The other day I pulled a six-footer out of a hole with the Kubota. I am now working on one which is apparently considerably larger. I haven’t been able to budge it. I put a strap on it and yanked with the tractor. A piece of the rock snapped off, the strap slipped, and the strap came flying at me at considerable speed. The end of it missed my head by less than a yard. I didn’t think I could stretch a strap over three inches in width that much.

People say a flying strap will kill you. I can tell you from watching this one fly by my head that it wouldn’t even have bruised me. Nonetheless, I was not pleased to observe its flight. I was trying to use common sense, and I had read a lot about safety in these situations, but the strap took off anyway.

The rock is oddly shaped. It has big projections on it. My theory is that if I split them off one by one, the rock will eventually give up. Picture a fat guy using his hands to hold onto a doorframe while you try to pull him out of the room. Cut off his hands, and he will come flying out.

The rock has, or had, a big wing pointing north. I put 4 wedges in it and bopped them with the hammer, and a crack opened up, severing the wing. Unfortunately, it was still pinned by the main body of the rock. I moved around 6″ closer to the rock and made another cut. Now I had three rocks. The big rock, the wing I couldn’t move, and a piece between them. Oddly, the middle piece was easy to move, even though it was stuck between two rocks that refused to budge. I picked it up with my hands and threw it out of the hole.

I used my Makita rotary hammer to drill the holes. Everyone should have a rotary hammer. It’s in between hammer drills and demo hammers. My hammer is about 1-1/6 horsepower, and it will do three things: hammer, drill, and hammer-drill.

I needed to make 5/8″ holes for the wedges, and when I got started today, I found out my only 5/8″ carbide bit was for my little hammer drills. My cordless hammer drill is very nice. It will push a 1″ auger through oak as though it were cheese. I tried it on my rock, and after maybe a minute, I was probably only 1.5″ in. I was not having that.

I drove to Ocala, bought a 5/8″ SDS-Plus bit 18″ long, and got out the rotary hammer. I would say it cut roughly twice as fast as the hammer drill. Well worth the drive. I am sorely tempted to get a considerably bigger rotary hammer. Makita makes one that hits with 4 times as much energy as mine. That would be a joy to behold.

It’s really hot and muggy these days, so I can’t work hard for more than maybe 90 minutes. “Won’t” may be more accurate. I made two cuts, and my clothes were already heavy with sweat, so I called it a day.

The rock is defeated. I don’t know if I’ll continue until the whole thing comes out, but I can definitely knock the top off, and if I do that, I can bury it again, and it will be well below lawnmower range. The challenge of removing the entire thing is tempting. I don’t think I’ll be able to resist. I enjoy mocking the rock too much.

Once I get the rock removed or beheaded, I’ll be able to clean the area up, add soil and mulch, and plant my blackberry plants. Then I can move on to shrubs that need to be murdered and replaced.

It’s surprising to me to see such hard rock in Florida, which I think of as a giant sandbar. Parts of the rock are hard and glassy like flint, and other parts are basically sandstone. They’re mixed together, along with empty voids. I wouldn’t have expected to be able to drill it so easily, but it shatters readily, so the drill goes right in.

After this, I have one more rock to go. There are others, but they’re in areas where they don’t cause problems. I have a big ridge of very large boulders on the west side of the property. Some are as big as several couches. They’re fine. They look good, and they’re not in the way of my lawnmower.

Don’t let rocks push you around. If they try to intimidate you, show them your drill and wedges. You don’t need expensive equipment to turn them into pebbles.