As they say, back to the old grinding board.
Took a couple days to do this last strip. Moved a few pieces around to fill in gaps without many extras to work with. Lots of dust and noise. Gloves. Mask. Eyes. Ears. Have to stop by 4pm when kiddies home and obviously not on quiet weekends. I'm sometimes
"that one guy in the neighborhood" except for all the time their dogs going crazy throughout the day and night. I try to be positive karma. Pretty sure that is so.
How to do it all wrong:
1. Pick the wrong stone available. Pick a shale like material with sharp edges. Sure it's got the right color and looks good at the lot but is completely wrong.
2. Don't fill in the gaps with polymeric sand. Or even concrete like they do in Greece (too much movement here in clay-base land). Over a decade the tree droppings will turn into nice dirt and grow big weeds every week.
3. Many times I thought of removing it all and starting over with brick. ~$4k invested with waiting six months for the second batch and too much time and physical stress putting the pieces together.
4. (Man if there was ever a prompt to say f-it..and start over from scratch)
5. Most importantly, don't ever put down the recommended 6"+ layer of base. Go cheap. It doesn't matter in the long run right?
Canadian flagstone:
It splits horizontally after you've just worked with it and handled it gently. Random.
Big slabs even slit vertically.
HF grinder sputters and dies. Must be dust in the switch. Wall outlet is good. Blow it all out. Plenty of brush meat. No burnt wires. Spins easy. Nothing obvious. Bypass the switch with a couple screwdrivers (plastic grips and gloves!!!) doesn't do anything or even cause a spark. Resorted to a backup old Craftsman grinder-beast which is 3x as heavy. Tank. When using 1-handed, I nicked the skin on my left hand but was saved by reaction time and glove. The safety cover was angled for personal protection instead of dust in case of accident. Sweat and tears plus blood trifecta completed..unfortunately..but could have been joebob level. Where is that guy anyways? Taking apart grinders is easy. But I never got the question to why it failed.
This is only Step 1.
Step 2 is digging out the dirt then using base material to level the run.
Step 3 is filling gaps between stones and compacting. Polymeric sand is an expensive hack but should last longer than dirt.