GET A HOBBY: work with ROCKS and CEMENT like JOHN DUNSWORTH

the evil that men do lives after them the good is of turd with their bones hi my name is John dunsworth I like to play with cement and rocks I have no idea why I think it might have something to do with the fact that I'd like to leave a legacy maybe a little after I'm gone and people say hey who made that there I am still alive maybe that's it maybe it's because I want to get in shape I'm I lost 20 lbs this summer doing stone work so I feel physically able I'm 66 years old and I hope I have a couple more years but this vide is for somebody who wants to build something using cement now it's a lot of hard work but we're going to run through it step by step now I don't know where you live but I have a great environment that I work in this is the Atlantic Ocean here my dad gave 10 children in our family he gave us all a piece of land 30 years ago and most of my family build around here there's my house up there I built that myself and there's stairways and Rockway and stone walls I used to stop every day on my way home from from working Halifax put 15 stones in my trunk and come down and throw them in a pile and then on the weekend build stone walls slowly but surely my friend more slowly than anything else first thing you going to need is cement yep I've gone through maybe 80 or 100 bags of cement this summer now the first thing you really need is a cement mixer now you can do it by hand in a wheelbarrow but it's an awful lot of work this little Beauty has been mine for maybe 15 years it has mixed thousands of loads of cement it's still faithful and wonderful works perfect now you're going to need some buckets this is a great bucket I got at home hardware I think seven or eight bucks three buckets of sand one bucket of cement how much water do you think should lubricate that mass I'll tell you check this out less than a third of a bucket believe it or not and you take your bucket full of water and you put it in your machine and then you go and get some sand I think a raccoon went through here last night you drive your truck to the Quarry and they put on a ton of sand and you unload it and you should unload it on a piece of plastic cuz it mixes in with the ground and I think this is my 11th ton this year you mix the first bucket full of sand with the water and then you turn the machine on but there's one thing you do before you do that and that is you put on your safety glasses if you're a lady and you want to keep your hands nice and soft like me then put a little hand cream on them and then put on your nice surgical gloves don't get the ones that you wash dishes with cuz they'll fall apart immediately and now we're ready to mix them in next you put in your cement and then mix it up now some people say you're not putting your hands in that cement mixer be very difficult to to get your hand caught in here you'd have to try really hard now that's beautiful now we got another bucket of sand we'll be on our way the mixture we use is three to one three buckets of sand one bucket of c and again we make sure it's mixed in nice now you can see it's starting to chicking up here that's what you want you got to have a real good wheelbarrow my wife gave me this for Christmas about 5 years ago I maybe it's because I I I would like to make some kind of uh order out of chaos but not really cuz most of my life I create chaos you know so my mother remembers I came into the house once when I was 2 years old say Mommy I have rocks in my tummy turns out it was true I had swallowed some rocks but what I've been trying to do is secure the Waterfront from the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean today is a red letter day the end of an incredibly arduous task when you consider that this barrel of cement might do this area you can imagine how much it took to do all of this I don't know if it's lucky stars or if it's your metabolism I don't know what it is but some days things just work wonderfully and some days it's a struggle but if you persist through the struggle it'll still get done I've used this for 20 years just scarves you buy at the San or something doctors laugh at me when I say my back pain comes from getting a cold back and lifting something that ah it's got nothing to do with the cold back I'm convinced it does so this has saved many a back pain for Johnny dun now these big rocks over here as you can guess big excavator can put those in did a wonderful job now I've laid out what we need here let's start sometimes you have to really be imaginative to find your materials you can always buy it I I have a certain language for rock picking scabbling is almost like taking a rock that you didn't own from a place that you don't have any permission to take them from and I've got hundreds of those rocks from dump sites and things you go for a little drive in the country and you'll see a barn that's falling down and you can walk over and if there's nice Stones there you can knock at The Farmhouse next to it and you'll say oh help yourself help yourself and you do now I don't use a level for much stuff but what I like to do is have a semi straight line now I like that but how much cement are we wasting Lots so [Applause] we'll just mix some Stones up stones that I got from the beach it's always nice to have a gentle Persuader for breaking rocks up if you need some more rocks when you work with stone a lot of times you get kind of sentimental about it I don't know why sometimes you feel sorry for a stone that doesn't fit same way as you feel sorry for people that don't fit well some people you feel sorry for but you hear about that BBC star and that coach in the Catholic Church what's going on get a hobby do cement work this is the last Stone now there's one more step that we do and that is to take a paintbrush and just smooth it out now I very seldom have cement this wet but it'll Harden right up so that it'll be just as hard as that by tomorrow you can drive a truck over this I have a very accurate case of low self-esteem and by accomplishing things makes me feel better it has its rewards and one is stand back and say there's no set rule to it trial and error it's good enough for the girl I go with it's a John job now I hope that this lasts until after I'm gone I don't expect people are going to look at you know my stone wall and say hey John dunsworth built that I mean they'll probably say something like I think it was Jeff dunsworth who built that he's my son clean that old wheelbarrow and you have to I'm telling you that cement will stick to anything so my dear friends that's how you make something with granite and concrete all around here there are little things like right over there there's a compass rose I'm building a theater down here you can see the big star in the middle there this was 3 years ago to commemorate my daughter Molly being in a movie called hobo with a shotgun and that's all seag glass that she collected right here from bumbly Beach you can do anything you like you could build a little seat you can have your lunch right here this isn't finished yet it's going to be nice here you can have nice cool drink or you can make a fire pit like right here I always wanted to have a swimming pool it was always part of my dream I was the guy with the white picket fence and the two kids and beautiful wife and now I have four four kids a beautiful wife no picket fence but I got my pool cuz I built it myself fill your boots be imaginative as you like I hope you try it if you do you feel just like me young happy they call me rock manin off or here again John again [Music] or Rockman or Mr silly yeah okay man

Channel: Dunsworth Family Productions

Views: 1,925,629

Keywords: John Dunsworth, how to build stone walls, rocks, cement, atlantic ocean, mixing cement, northwest cove, nova scotia, south shore, Julie MacAlpine

Id: 3mcQfP8k51s

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 15 2013