TECHNICAL FAQ
What is
ashlar stone?
Ashlar is stone cut into squared, rectangular pieces and laid in courses. It is the most ordered of the natural stone cuts — clean horizontal joints, random lengths, and a face the saw never touches.
The word is old. In traditional masonry, ashlar meant dressed blocks squared on every side — the walls of courthouses, churches, and universities. In modern thin stone veneer, ashlar keeps the idea and drops the mass: rectangular pieces in a range of heights and random lengths, sawn thin on the back, with a natural split or seam face showing on the wall.
On a finished wall, ashlar reads as coursed and composed. Heights repeat, lengths vary, and joints stay roughly horizontal. It suits traditional and transitional architecture, and it is the cut most often intended when a drawing calls for coursed stone veneer.
Ashlar vs. the other cuts.
| Piece height | The look | |
|---|---|---|
| Ashlar | 4–8″ (avg 6″) | Squared, coursed, orderly |
| Ledge | 1–4″ (avg 3″) | Low, linear, strongly horizontal |
| Field Ledge | 1–8″ (avg 5″) | Ledge with 10–20% irregular shapes mixed in |
| Castle | 4–14″ (avg 8″) | Large, dimensional, old-world mass |
Ashlar at The Stone Mill.
Ten of our fifteen Michigan blends are cut in ashlar — quarried in Michigan and cut at our mill in Howard City. Piece heights, geology, and full specifications are on each blend page, with a downloadable spec sheet for submittals.
Every ashlar piece is real quarried stone: natural cleft top and bottom, a split or seam face, and backs sawn for thin veneer at 10–14 pounds per square foot.
SAMPLES
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