trysail
Catch Me Who Can
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2005
- Posts
- 25,593
Riprap is not "obsolete" around Britain's sea coasts. It is frequently used for coastal protection to break up the force of the waves.
Because it is piled randomly instead of being cemented in place it will move when battered by large waves unlike a conventional concrete wall which could break. If riprap is really shifted by a severe storm it can be moved back into place.
Locally we have several lengths of riprap wave defences made of large granite boulders. An artist decided that she would use one of the boulders to create a sculpture for our seafront gardens. She intended to make it into a complete three-dimensional Turk's Head Knot. Unfortunately she had never worked with granite before. After eighteen months of work and breaking many power tools she produced a Turk's Head Knot emerging from a granite boulder. It is an attractive sculpture and has one significant advantage - it is vandal-proof (and immovable).
Good catch, Og. I missed that.
Riprap is ubiquitous here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riprap
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