Tool Guide Working with natural landscape materials requires a variety of tools. If you're working with mulch, gravel or other "spreading" products, you'll probably only need a shovel and wheelbarrow. When working with stone, however, you will need a number of different tools, from shovels and levels to hammers and chisels. This page gives an overview of the basic tools you will need for different types of projects.

Spreading: mulch, gravel, soil, etc.

Shovel
Wheelbarrow
Dirt rake (think you can handle it?)

Excavating & Measuring: pond, patio, wall, sidewalk, etc.

Garden hose or rope: curve it into different shapes to plan the outline of ponds, landscape areas, etc.
Shovel (and the energy to use it)
Wheelbarrow
Tape measure

Working with Stone

Masons Hammer: Chisel on the "claw side" and a square-faced hammer on the other. This is the best tool for chipping and installing stone, brick or block.

Level: Three sizes of level are handy – 4-foot, 2-foot and "torpedo."

• Four-foot level is best for determining level lines that span several feet.
• Two-foot level is more helpful in leveling adjacent stones; it's short enough to span the stones, but not too long.
• Torpedo level is small (8") and allows you to check the orientation of an individual stone (front-to-back and side-to-side).

Grout Bag: Any time stone is laid over mortar, the joints need to be filled in with mortar, but care must be taken to avoid smearing mortar on the face of the stone. A grout bag (which is essentially an oversized pastry bag) allows a precise application of mortar with minimal overlap onto the stone face. Once the mortar sets up (still soft but crumbly), the joints can be dressed to the proper depth by scraping away any excess mortar with a small joint tool.

Please accept our apologies for the lack of content on this page. We have just created our new site, and are still working on some of the more complicated sections. We hope to have these sections completed soon, so keep checking back. Thank You!

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