Architectural stone & carved lettering · Chalkwater · the dressed-edge yard since 1961
The edges of a building are the building.
Chalkwater Stone & Letter cuts sills, lintels, copings and date stones, and restores the dressed edges the weather eats first — every profile traced from the standing building, every letter cut by hand, every bed laid in lime. The figures below are read straight out of the cutting shed’s ledgers.
Everyone fixes the roof and points the field. The sills and the string course are what actually hold the building’s face together — and Chalkwater is the only yard that traces them instead of catalogue-matching them.
The cutting rates
Traced from your building, cut in the shed, dry-fitted on the ground before anything is bedded. Held sixty days; the trace is part of the price and the profile drawing is yours to keep.
The trace starts from a picture
Per piece, cut to trace
Window sills & stools$180–$420
traced, Thakestone or match · weathered drip cut new
Lintels & date stonesfrom $310
structural or dress · lettering optional, hand cut
Copings & string courses$64/ln ft
NHL 5 beds · dowelled at joints
Carved lettering, per character$9
V-cut by hand · gilding optional
Dutchmen & arris repairs$26/sq ft
sound stone cut back, matched inserts bedded in lime
Trace
The profile is taken from the standing stone with templates and a profile comb — never guessed at from a catalogue page.
Cut
Thakestone or a matched salvage stock, cut at the shed on three saws and dressed by hand at the bench.
Dry-fit
Every piece is offered up on the ground — and on the wall, unbonded — before the first bed is mixed.
Lay & warrant
Bedded in NHL lime, joints struck to the original profile, and the thirty-year warranty signed with the trace attached.
Recent work
The register
Six entries from the register — edges, letters and one inscription that stopped a demolition argument. The register is a public document; ask and we will read you any line of it.
Our sills had been “repaired” with concrete by two generations of well-meaning people. Chalkwater traced the two that were original, cut the rest to match, and the elevation reads 1890 from across the street. The trace drawing is filed with our deeds.
The date stone they cut for our barn is the best lettering I have seen outside a churchyard. You can read it by moonlight, which the lettercutter apparently tests for.
The register holds 4,081 entries since 1961 — every edge traced, every letter counted, every warranty retrievable. Buyers’ surveyors ask for entries by number now.
Traces, letters, beds
Asked at the bench
Why trace instead of catalogue-match?
Because no two nineteenth-century yards cut the same mould, and the difference between a catalogue sill and the original is visible from the pavement. A trace costs a visit and an hour at the bench; a wrong profile costs the elevation its credibility forever.
How is lettering cut and priced?
By hand, with a chisel and a dummy mallet, in the letterform the building already owns — V-cut, so it holds its shadow at noon. Nine dollars a character, layouts drawn for your approval, gilding optional. We cut house names, dates, memorials and the occasional poem, at the client’s discretion and ours.
What are the pieces bedded in?
Natural hydraulic lime — NHL 3.5 for dress pieces, NHL 5 at copings and parapets — on stone that has been dry-fitted first. Portland is stronger than old stone, and a bed stronger than what it carries breaks the stone to save the mortar: exactly backwards.
Can you match our stone?
Thakestone is the shed’s standing stock, cut from the same beds as most of the valley’s dressings. Beyond that, three quarries and two salvage yards — the match is approved wet, in daylight, beside the wall it will live in.
Counted at the shed door
The season ledger, closed last December
Thirty years on the bed and the letter
If a piece we cut fails, a bed we lay lets go, or a letter we cut loses its shadow inside thirty years, we return and correct it free — the register entry tells us exactly what was done, which is why the promise can be this plain.
letters@chalkwater.example · the shed answers, Mon–Sat
Send the edge a photograph.
A clear side-on photograph of the sill, coping or lettering gets a same-day opinion and a trace appointment inside the week. The lettercutters answer between cuts; the saw answers to no one.