I'm a stone mason, and I'm half way convinced that a fair portion of the posts here are at MOST five people. AMA?
The title.
Feel free to ask me stuff. I'm in Scotland, born in Canada. I've been a mason for coming on 15 years. And my favourite dinosaur is....not really a dinosaur.....the Stenopterygius species. because they're tubby not quite dolphin looking (apparently) reptiles.
Honestly just kinda fell into it. Was working in a warehouse and hated it. Just walked off one day, called a friend just to complain about it and the firm he was working for happened to be hiring. I was 18, I'm now a few months away from 40.
For the bonus: I left and did other stuff here and there, few years of demolition, but always ended up back at a masonry firm. I'm good at it. It's heavy work, but there's a lot of thinking involved. Sometimes you spend 3 times as long thinking about how a stone is going to go in around various obstructions without damaging anything than it takes to actually fit the stone. It's mentally stimulating and physically taxing. I guess to take the long way to answering your question, I always wanted to do masonry as soon as I started it. I only left for something else due to shitty bosses.