I don't like sandstone. We've spent part of yesterday and all day today digging a hole into the stuff so that we can plant a signal at Kingscote. It's really really demoralising rock - it's so hard that you can't put a digger bucket into it, hence you have to go at it with a mechanical pecker first. At which point it fluffs up nicely into something softer than the average beach or sandpit, so you can scoop it up with a bucket and spade if you wanted to, or even your bare hands. But if you try again with the digger bucket - scrape, no. To add insult to injury, if you get a lump of it out and drop it, it either fractures, much like sweets made from crystalised sugar, or turns straight to power. But it won't do that down the hole - no no no. Instead it fluffs up so that you can't see where to peck. And the pneumatic box for the digger's pecker is wider than the pecker tip, so the pecker by itself makes a tapered hole. The upshot of this is that we have to go down the hole with a Kango hammer to widen the sides to try keep a constant width on the way down. In the end we did the last foot or so by "hand". For all we disliked the "snot" at Horstead Keynes (because it tried to collapse in on us behind the shoring timbers) at least the digger went through it with ease.
I like limestone. It dissoves with acid. Far more lazy. :-)
Of course, the Derbyshire millstone grit is still the best.
