The aim is always safety and comfort first.
- Wear comfortable work clothes, tough enough to withstand abrasion from rough stones. Scottish wallers used to wear aprons cut to knee length in front, with bibs designed to protect their waistcoats, and rolled up at the back so as to tie at the waist. These are sometimes still worn at demonstrations, but overalls or a boiler suit are more convenient substitutes.
- Boots with steel toe-caps are essential to protect the toes. Heavy leather work boots with spiked or deep moulded soles are safest. If you have an old but serviceable pair, work in them, since new boots quickly become much the worse for wear when walling. Wellingtons with toe caps are adequate, but their soles do not grip as well as boots on wet grassy slopes.
- Gloves will save much discomfort later for workers not used to handling stone. They are especially important when handling coarse stone such as gritstone, corrosive stone such as limestone, and sharp slate. Gloves also protect your wrists when handling large stones.
Many people prefer to work bare handed because they find it easier to then judge the shape of the stone, and because hammers slip more readily from a gloved hand. You can toughen your hands up gradually by wearing gloves less as you become used to the work. The hammering hand should harden up fairly quickly. However, it’s always worth wearing gloves for dismantling walls, as unseen broken glass can be a hazard. Dismantling accounts for half the stone handling in rebuilding a wall, and is a fairly continuous activity and thus hard on the hands.
If you only wall occasionally and for short periods, wear sturdy, flexible, leather work gloves. For more intensive periods of work, PVC gloves are harder wearing, and are waterproof for working in wet weather. Wear thermal liners inside for protection from the cold.
Some Cotswold craftsmen used to wear pads rather than full gloves. These were cut from leather or rubber, such as old inner tubing, with holes for the wrist, fingers and thumb. With these, a good waller could pick up and place stones with each hand, keeping the palms down, thereby working more quickly with less strain. This technique was probably restricted to the Cotswolds, where walling stone is small enough to be lifted with one hand. - Goggles or eyeshields to protect your eyes when breaking and drilling stone. Eye protectors should be manufactured to European Standard EN 166:2001.
