Attachments for Stone Wall Construction and Landscaping

In short: Stone wall construction and landscaping involve three recurring tasks: digging up and sorting stones, lifting stones into place, and leveling the soil between and around them. Each of these has its own attachment.

Digging up and sorting stones

When stones come out of the ground or an old wall, a stone bucket helps separate the coarser material from the finer - soil and smaller particles fall through the gaps in the bucket, leaving only the usable stones. This saves manual screening, especially with larger quantities.

• Stone bucket: sorts stone from soil as you dig, see our excavator stone buckets.
• Ripper tooth: for breaking into stony and compact ground when stones are deeply embedded, see our ripper teeth.

Lifting and placing stones

With larger stones, sorting isn't enough - they need to be lifted precisely into position and held there until the next stone goes alongside. This is where grapples help, holding a stone firmly even when its shape is uneven.

• Grapples: suited to lifting round and irregular stones, when a bucket wouldn't give a firm enough grip.
• Tiltrotator: if the machine has one, it helps rotate the stone precisely and set it at the desired angle, without having to reposition the machine.

Leveling the soil between stones

After placing the stones, the soil around the wall or between paths often still needs leveling. A wide grading bucket or leveling bucket is useful here, giving an even surface without having to move the stones again.

Common mistakes in stonework

• Wrong bucket choice: a standard digging bucket doesn't sort stones, it just mixes them back in with the soil.
• Too large a bucket: if the stone bucket is too large for the machine, power runs short and work slows down in hard ground.
• Not checking the mount: lifting stones is heavy work, so the attachment's mount must be properly locked before every lift.

Tell us what size of stones you're working with and which machine you use, and we'll recommend a suitable stone bucket or grapple. You can also browse all our excavator attachments or get in touch via our contact page.