Arch Stack

Arch Stack, originally uploaded by escher1.

I was imagining a stack where in the middle there would be a circle, an upside dowb arch with a another arch on top but this changed to making an ordinary arch. I needed two rocks with sloping edges to hold the arch. The first one came easily but it took ages to find a second one. But once I had done I liberated flat slabs from the earlier stack, found some more and constrcuted the arch. It took 3 attempts to hold them altogether and slot them into place. I didn't use anything underneath to hold them, I just slotted them straight in the shuffled them around a little to make the arch more pronounced. It worked quite well. I was in a quandry as to what to do next. My first idea was to place a large curved branch through the middle to create a wooden arch and then build slabs around the ends to give the affect that the wood was growing out of the stone. I searched for a suitable branch but nothing was quite right so instead I continued the stack. The rest of the stack was quite precarious and one of the big slabs on the end fell over and I can't believe the arch survived. The connecting stone in the middle was only just standing up and each stone added on top made the arch creak a little more each time. Wisely I thought I had better get a photo at this point as I thought it was coming down soon. I wanted to put a large pinnacle on top and as I was doing so it did fall down so I am glad I got this picture before I tried that.