Garlydog,
Reading your post and another one one here tonight about a coop built in the ground,reminds me of how I spent two months about 5 years ago,down in the bottom of Laraway Stone Quarry,just a stones throw west of the race tracks south of Joliet. Your idea of building a coop out of stone would have been easy with what I was doing that winter.
Everytime they do a "shot" blast for more stone to crush,there are "oversized" pieces of rock that are way to big to even be loaded into the 60 ton haul trucks they have.In order to try and save money,many times when they drilled the holes for the "shot" they would make them farther apart than the normal 20',and sometimes would drill them 30' apart,,less hole drilling,,more stone blasted away from the rock face,,more production from each blast.What would normally result in a 50,000 ton blast would now be closer to 75,000 tons,but because the charges was placed a lot farther apart,many times there were blocks of limestone as big as 12'x12',so they just pushed all these oversized rocks in a huge pile until they ran out of room.
I was called there by the company to use a rock breaker and break these oversized boulders up into smaller sized pieces that could be at least loaded up and run thru the crusher.Many times, I could find the "sweet spot" on the top side of the boulder,and with just a few "pecks" from the rock breaker,split off pieces of limestone about 1' thick,12' by 12',,it was like slicing a loaf of bread.Two months of this,day in and day out resulted in me working myself,out of work,,,so to speak,but it is fun.Flagstone is all over around Joliet,,and if building a coop from solid pieces of limestone would work,each as big as a wall,they too can be located,,or split in pieces that big, I know,,
