# mancave progress report...



## tooter (Feb 26, 2010)

I'm still jackhammering away on the man cave like a crazy old gold miner... 

...but am now much closer to the finish than to the start! 

The whole basement space is 12'x24'. About 20 cubic yards of earth and rocks have been removed so far, and there's 8' x 8' x 3' or about 7 cubic yards left to hammer out...










Can't wait to get a workbench and layout table set up, so I can* finally* do something *else* besides kitbashing. 

Greg


----------



## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Are you up on high ground? 
Are you going to pour a floor?

Go to the unemployment office and hire a few of the bigger guys to dig the rest out.
That looks to much like, WORK to me.
To me it would be worth a couple of $100 to get it cleared!

Better yet incorporate the dirt into the layout! Make some real tunnels and you don't even have to make the hills.:laugh:

Be cool if you struck gold.


----------



## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

I happened to be watching Armageddon on TV tonight ... you need Bruce Willis and one of his Armadillo rigs on your side! They'd get the job done ASAP!

TJ


----------



## nsr_civic (Jun 21, 2010)

hell i would just plant some short grass on it and lay track! instant layout!!! lolz lookin good...


----------



## tooter (Feb 26, 2010)

big ed said:


> Are you up on high ground?
> Are you going to pour a floor?


We're up in a canyon. Not sure what I'm going to do about a floor. For now I'll just level it out. We have adobe soil so once the rocks are picked and raked off the the surface, it compacts nicely just by walking on it.



> Go to the unemployment office and hire a few of the bigger guys to dig the rest out.
> That looks to much like, WORK to me.


It's not when you're working towards your own goals. I'd rather hire myself and save the money so I can buy more trains.  

When we had a backhoe rough in the foundation footing trenches, I spent 4 days in them digging for China cleaning them out and flattening and squaring the bottoms before the concrete was pumped in... so now I'm back digging again. It's an odd coincidence that the foundation took 27 yards of pumped concrete to fill the forms 10 years ago... and now I'm removing 27 yards of dirt and bedrock.



> To me it would be worth a couple of $100 to get it cleared!
> 
> Better yet incorporate the dirt into the layout! Make some real tunnels and you don't even have to make the hills.:laugh:
> 
> Be cool if you struck gold.


We already did by building our own home.


----------



## tankist (Jun 11, 2009)

wow, this one is literraly a cave. 
ah, reminds me of my parents crawl space we were working on several years back. we did not make it livable however, just improved the drainage and threw the garbage out (previous owner left bunch of stuff to feed mold in there.

this is work, but a very rewording one. i'd rather spend the couple 100's on trains ...


----------



## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

tankist said:


> wow, this one is literraly a cave.
> ah, reminds me of my parents crawl space we were working on several years back. we did not make it livable however, just improved the drainage and threw the garbage out (previous owner left bunch of stuff to feed mold in there.
> 
> this is work, but a very rewording one. i'd rather spend the couple 100's on trains ...


Yes it's better to spend the $100 on trains, I agree.

Unless you get a hernia or pull your back out or have a heart attack doing it.
Then you will end up spending a lot more then a C-note.

I could probably get it done for $50 around my neck of the woods.:laugh:

That's mostly rock under there Greg?


----------



## tooter (Feb 26, 2010)

big ed said:


> Unless you get a hernia or pull your back out or have a heart attack doing it.
> Then you will end up spending a lot more then a C-note.


None of those need to be of any concern when you've done physical labor for all of your life. Doing projects like this is why I'm still in pretty decent shape for being in my sixties. 



> That's mostly rock under there Greg?


All depends on how far down you're into it. On the top it's about one third rock. At bedrock there's more rock than dirt. Great for a home foundation, just hard to dig. It's a basaltic rock called ironstone which looks like this separated from the dirt which gets spread evenly over the land. It's hard and brittle so the jackhammer fractures the smaller stuff...










...but the big ones have to be dug out whole...










Rock is a valuable resource...
Every time any digging or drilling was done on the land, we saved up all the nice sized rocks. My wife has built over 100 feet of retaining walls out of them.


----------



## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

Greg,

That's some rock pile! A very nice thumbs-up to your wife for the wall!

Here in New England, we have miles and miles of old stone walls meandering through the woods and meadows on what is (or used to be) old farm land. Many people think that the farmers built the walls to delineate their property lines. Truth is, as they would clear land for new farming, they'd inevitably dig up dozens and dozens of rocks. They had to put them somewhere (other than the planting area), so they simply piled them around the permiter of the field. With a little extra work, the perimeter piles became mortarless stone walls. Very nice, to this day. But if you could go back in time, I'd bet many farmers would wish that they had no stone walls ... and no stones that they had to dig up to clear their fields for planting!

TJ


----------



## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

tjcruiser said:


> Greg,
> 
> That's some rock pile! A very nice thumbs-up to your wife for the wall!
> 
> ...


Many were used as lines of demarcation, and still stand in their original form today. I see them all over TJ in my travels and it is amazing of how many hours and sweat went into building them.
Rock picking is every New England farmer's springtime misery. During the winter as the earth freezes and thaws, rocks rise to the surface of the fields; they must be removed before plowing can proceed. Stacked at the edges of the fields, they are the raw material for all those stone walls.

Wherever we see a stone wall today, there had to have been a field. These stone walls stand as evidence that many people lived off the rocky land in New England.

Many of the stonewalls which were built have markings with initials, and these initials, usually on a square stone, tell who built them and in what year (McGee 87). A great amount of human strength went into the building of these walls. The early craftsman took thirty minutes to drill a hole through a stone and hundreds of hammer blows on a three-foot, star-pointed iron drill, turning the drill with a slight twist of the wrist between blows. Each stone wall was prepared by a trench a foot wider than the top stones, and two feet deep for the foundation. These stone walls would not be standing today if it were not for these underground bases.

A good stone wall is said to last a couple of hundred years. Many of the stone walls are two feet wide at the top and five feet high in some places. Many were built by Civil War veterans in the 19th century.

Some of the stone walls in Connecticut towns contain, it has
been estimated, over six thousand tons of rock, averaging
forty inches wide and rise as high as six feet to form an even
surface without mortar in its entire length, with each stone
used as fitting tightly, most of the stones having been cut to
size and shape in a quarry.

Nice stone wall you have there Greg, did you build yours that way?


----------



## tooter (Feb 26, 2010)

My wife and I are real rock hounds...  
Whenever the County does any local projects that involve digging or drill rigs, after they quit for the day, we move in and score the good rocks off the piles. There's also a big hillside around the corner from us and every rainy season, nice rocks become dislodged and tumble down to the road where we collect them. It's a fun game.

We use below-grade foundations made from the biggest rocks. The permanent load bearing walls are mortared together, while the decorative ones are simply piled in case we want to move things around.

Ironstone is very angular and faceted so the rocks "key" together very well.


----------



## tooter (Feb 26, 2010)

tjcruiser said:


> Greg,
> 
> That's some rock pile! A very nice thumbs-up to your wife for the wall!


Thanks, tj... I'm lucky to have her as she's a genuine pioneer woman. Our rural homesteading lifestyle fits both of us perfectly.



> Here in New England, we have miles and miles of old stone walls meandering through the woods and meadows on what is (or used to be) old farm land. Many people think that the farmers built the walls to delineate their property lines. Truth is, as they would clear land for new farming, they'd inevitably dig up dozens and dozens of rocks. They had to put them somewhere (other than the planting area), so they simply piled them around the permiter of the field. With a little extra work, the perimeter piles became mortarless stone walls. Very nice, to this day. But if you could go back in time, I'd bet many farmers would wish that they had no stone walls ... and no stones that they had to dig up to clear their fields for planting!
> 
> TJ


That's the natural thing to do... and we did the same kind of rock gleaning when we cleared land for the vegetable garden fruit trees and grape vines.

Greg


----------



## MacDaddy55 (Aug 19, 2008)

*Choo Choo,You need these guys!*

Truly the unsung backbone of the Continental Railroad.....and the crew to do your Man Cave! I saw this photo when I was stationed in Oakland and it left an impression. Then I read Stephen Ambrose "Nothing like it in the World" and it REALLY left an impression......so these guys are the Crew for you!


----------



## Rocky Mountian (May 17, 2010)

MacDaddy55 said:


> Truly the unsung backbone of the Continental Railroad.....and the crew to do your Man Cave! I saw this photo when I was stationed in Oakland and it left an impression. Then I read Stephen Ambrose "Nothing like it in the World" and it REALLY left an impression......so these guys are the Crew for you!


Thats a great book.


----------



## imatt88 (Jan 31, 2010)

Yup, same here in Michigan. We can thank the Glaciers for our bountiful rock collections:laugh:


----------

