DIY Quarry?

Does anyone have experience with quarrying on a small scale? Is it even feasible?

I like rock as a building material and it’s a little scarce for me (without going out and buying it, anyway).

Right now, I’m collecting rocks that turn up when I’m working in the soil for other projects.

But I live in an area with limestone bedrock and I’m curious how feasible it would be for me to attempt to quarry rock directly.

It also seems like a small quarry would be perfect to repurpose into a deep pond after I’ve gotten the rock I’m after.

Insane idea? Doable? Google hasn’t been real helpful so far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artisanal_mining

I have no land and haven't done anything, but I've toyed with similar ideas. In Arizona, where I live,  there are lots of private mines that open up to rockhounds to go out and dig pits for fire agates, for example. I know there are many similar options for all kinds of materials. Slate for example. I've hiked many places that had vast amounts of usable slate just lying there. I'm nore interested in natural pozzolano. How do get it out in the quantity you need, etc, is the obvious problem.

My plan it to build with adobe, given the climate. I'm expecting to use the adobe pit on site as an irrigation cistern, or possibly a partial basement or sunken courtyard.

I understand that in New York State, and probably many other places, you need a permit for any sort of quarrying or mining. If you are doing it for only home purposes, you may well be able to sail under the radar, or say you are digging a pond, but I would probably not want to do it in an area visible from outside your property.

My land has one ravine that cuts into the shale/mudstone bedrock at some points, and there are still traces of quarrying for foundation stone from the 1800s (drill tracks) visible in the ravine bank. The usable stone tends to come out already in flat rectangular shapes.

You can legally get gravel and rock in small quarries for your own home or homestead. Here in Maine it is a quarter ace quarry or a one acre gravel pit. That’s a lot.

It can be done. There are videos on line of hard rock mining for gold, but the technique is the same.

A homemade way around dynamite is fire. Start a fire and heat the rock up, then douse with water and it will break apart easily

Today we also have small electric or pneumatic tools that are cheap to buy and bust up rock.

I dredged up a lot of slate for my home from gathering slate around my farm

My neighbor built the foundation for his barn using rock quarried from a spot on his land.  It's very near my property line and he told me I could do the same if I like.  I haven't used any of it because it is what I grew up calling "sandstone" so it isn't very break resistant, but he built his foundation 30 or 40 years ago and it was still intact when they tore the barn down last summer.

I live where there is Limestone bedrock, too.

When a hole is dug there are too kinds of rocks that come out.  Usually, these are huge rocks that are either like chalk which if I remember correctly are called soft rocks and then there are the hard limestone rocks.

Having some sort of equipment to dig a hole and then break up the rock into manageable sizes would be good.

We have a tractor with a front end loader that can do some of that though there might be other equipment that is better for handling rock.