What are Riven Paving stones and how are they produced?
Riven paving stones offers a durable, rugged natural look that is strong and durable. The textured finish offers clean straight edges giving a paving solution that is stylish and resembles the antique appearance of natural stone with the added benefit of a slip resistant surface. For many years this has proved to be a popular flagging solution with both landscapers and contractors who are looking to achieve a traditional, timeless quality finish whilst having the ability to lay the stones in a way they can also achieve a contemporary appearance should that fir their customer’s requirements.
Producing high quality natural riven paving stones is a highly skilled process one in which our team of stone masons have many years’ training and experience.
Below are the steps involved in producing our natural looking Riven Paving from authentic Yorkstone sandstone.
- Step 1
A compressed air drill is used to create a series of holes across the quarried stone slab. The holes indicate where the stonemason proposes to break the slab into 50/50 sections.
- Step 2
Using plugs and feathers the mason then begins to hammer the plugs into each hole. Once all the holes are filled with these plugs and feathers, each plug is hit in turn – the force pushes the two sections of stone apart.
- Step 3
The feathers at either side of the hole forces the slab to crack along the required line.
- Step 4
The stone is now stood on it’s end for the mason, using only hand tools, to further split this into paving slabs between 1.5” and 3” thick.
- Step 5
Once a split appears in the stone and it has started to expand it can be widened using a variety of special stone tools.
- Step 6
Once the stone mason has split the larger slab down into two equal pieces – a clean finished riven face of the slab, with minimal tool marks, around the perimeter is achieved.