The Home Machinist!

My understanding is that people here do sell rocks. Some of them look very nice. The rocks, I mean.

SteveHGraham wrote: ↑Fri Dec 14, 2018 7:14 pm My understanding is that people here do sell rocks. Some of them look very nice. The rocks, I mean.

My wife came up with the idea of a pick-it-yourself rock farm some years ago, but we never did anything with it.

Easy to say from here but certain rocks and mortar lasted centuries.

We have no rocks; it's kind of weird. I have sand, and if I dig down I hit some clay and gravel. Sometimes lumps of sandstone but it's too soft to be useful.
If I want rocks, I have to buy them.
My neighbor's land has water worn pebbles and tiny sea shells. We're 80M above sea level at the moment.

I have some deals for you.

liveaboard wrote: ↑Sat Dec 15, 2018 8:03 am My neighbor's land has water worn pebbles and tiny sea shells. We're 80M above sea level at the moment.

In Utah, if one was to hike above the Stairs power station, located in Big Cottonwood Canyon, there's a myriad of types of small sea shells imbedded in the rock. The valley floor is right at 4,100 feet. The power station is about half way up the mountain, which is a part of the Wasatch Mountain Range.

Science has come a long way in understanding tectonics. The earth is far from static.

H

I've been fascinated by geology since I was a kid. I'm always investigating the rocks around me.
I used to live on the Decan traps, a 40 million year old lava formation mentioned in Geology texts; no one else seemed to care that the long meandering ridges that separated the villages are ancient lava flows, or that our village sat in a prehistoric lake bed.
Here in Portugal, the high cliffs at the sea's edge reveal layered rock that's folded and twisted. On one section at the cliff top, I found that if I crack rocks in half, something like 1/4 of them will have a fossil in it. Other cliffs a few miles away, no fossils.
The big Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755 wiped out this entire coastline, and I was told that the entire area lifted 1 meter. I don't know if that's true, but tidal river estuaries that were navigable for sea going ships can now barely float a canoe. The town where I go shopping was a sea port from Roman times [and probably before] until the earthquake.
There are almost no surviving records of the smaller villages; a local friend of mine is an academic and into these things. He told me that no one knows the age of the village, or its church, or practically anything about the place until a few hundred years ago. That surprised me. Our creek was once the border between the Christian kingdoms and the Muslims who held southern Portugal for a few centuries.
Maybe the village church is built on an old mosque...

That ain't no rock. That's a freaking boulder!

Drill two holes in the rock. One about 1/3 of the way down the rock at about a 45* angle. The second on the other side of the rock in a similar position. Insert a piece of bar into each hole and wrap a chain to encircle the rock and the bars. Keep the loop as tight as possible. Hook the truck or tractor to the other end of the rock and pull.

I lived atop a mountain for many years. My driveway and area under the house was Bedrock. I rented a small backhoe to dip out big ones in the way. If you have some area around a big rock that is dig able. Just dig a bigger, deeper hole next to the rock, then roll the rock into it. You don't need massive power to roll rocks, just enough to roll them. Second way to move a big rock is to dig all around the beast, and tip it to one side of the hole, then throw smaller rocks into the vacant space where the rock was. Now roll the rock back onto the pile of smaller rocks, toss rocks into where it was, roll rock back and repeat . It does not take long until you can now roll the rock out of the hole.