![\"Quoins](\"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Quoins-Tuscany-3.jpg\")
<\/a>Quoin photos clockwise from top left: Tuscan villa near Siena, Italy; ancient barn in Cotswolds, England; fieldstone building near Chianti, Italy; limestone quoins in Palma, Majorca, Spain; Limestone quoins in wall surrounding Volterra, Italy; granite quoins in ancient church near Dublin, Ireland.<\/span><\/p>\nModern Quoins<\/strong><\/span> Sometimes stonemasons, architects, and designers want the quoins to appear more finished than the rest of the stone.\u00a0 In the example shown below, the Cortona Limestone<\/a> quoins have a sawn face.\u00a0 The different surface texture makes the quoins stand out dramatically from the rest of the wall.<\/p>\n Ungutted Quoins<\/strong><\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Quoins are large rectangular stones used as cornerstones in traditional stone buildings.\u00a0 They provide structural support for buildings, particularly where rubble or fieldstone is used…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,1,2,33,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-featured","category-history","category-newsletter-archive","category-stone-facts"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7363"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7394,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7363\/revisions\/7394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Not every type of stone is appropriate for making quoins.\u00a0 Some stones don’t come in large enough sizes, whereas others can’t be worked into the desired shapes for quoins. The Cortona Limestone<\/a>, shown at right, is quarried in large blocks that work well for making quoins.\u00a0 In this Tuscan-style project, the quoins have the same chopped faces as the rest of the stone in the wall.\u00a0 The terra cotta bricks mixed with the quoins emulate a common feature in Tuscan buildings.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
Gutted Quoins<\/strong><\/span>
Most modern masonry walls are six-inch-thick stone veneers over block or framed walls.\u00a0 Designers sometimes want the quoins to be larger to make the stone walls appear thicker than they actually are.\u00a0 In this case, large quoins can be “gutted”, as shown below, so that they wrap around the corner of a 6 inch masonry wall.<\/a>Making gutted quoins is a labor- and equipment-intensive process, as shown for the Wilkeson Sandstone<\/a> above. Consequently, gutted quoins are an expensive addition to a masonry project.<\/p>\n
To get the traditional appearance without the added expense of gutted quoins, most stonemasons will sort out the larger rectangular blocks to be used as corners.\u00a0 However, often times there won’t be enough large rectangular stones to make into quoins.\u00a0 In this case, a different stone can be used for the quoins.\u00a0 In the example shown below, the quoins were made from Frontier Sandstone<\/a>,whereas the rest of the stone in the wall is Homestead Fieldstone<\/a>.<\/a><\/strong> Basic Masonry Rules for Quoins<\/strong><\/span>
There are just a few simple stonemasonry rules for setting quoins in a wall.\u00a0 The diagram below, reproduced from “The Art of the Stonemason<\/a>,” shows that stones immediately next to the quoins (or “rybits” as identified here) should not break the horizontal line of the quoin for a distance of at least 18 inches.\u00a0 This rule was broken in the center right of the photo above, and it detracts from the look of the quoins.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n