The First £750: Building a Stone Workshop That Actually Earns

Starting out on your own as a stone mason in 2026 is a strange mix of liberating and terrifying. You have the skills, the contacts and a van that mostly starts. What you do not have is a fully kitted workshop, and the internet is happy to tell you that you need £8,000 of kit before you can cut a plinth.

That is nonsense. £750 will not buy a dream shop. It will buy a working shop, provided you spend on the things that affect the quality and safety of the work and scrimp hard on the things that just need to hold a tool. The trick is to separate the kit that earns money from the kit that looks professional on Instagram.

Start with the jobs you will actually take

A new mason needs to cut, dress, drill, fix and finish. Most start with restoration, paving, fireplaces, headstones, kitchen worktops or small architectural pieces. That means dust, noise, water and accurate hand work matter more than a shiny tool wall. If you cannot control silica dust and water slurry, you are not saving money; you are borrowing against your lungs and your landlord's floor.

The £750 split

Area	Budget	The rule
Respiratory, eye, ear and hand protection	£170	Buy new and fit it properly
Cutting: grinder, blades, water	£170	Spend on the grinder and guard
Hand tools	£150	Mix new and used
Finishing and polishing	£110	Spend on pads, not the badge
Bench, vice, lighting and containment	£100	Buy used and heavy
Consumables and fixings	£50	Keep receipts and reorder early

That is the whole pot. No bridge saw, no extractor booth, no van wrap. If a job needs a bridge saw, hire time in a local yard or use a friendly mason's shop until the work justifies the purchase.

PPE: the line item you do not trim

A decent P3 half-mask, a fit test, sealed goggles, ear defenders, nitrile and rigger gloves, a waterproof apron and steel-toe boots will eat a chunk of the budget. Buy the mask new. A second-hand respirator is like a second-hand toothbrush. If you have a beard, sort out a clean-shaven seal or a powered respirator before you start chasing sandstone with a grinder.

Water suppression and dust control are part of the tooling, not an afterthought. A plant sprayer and a wet sponge are not proper water control. A bucket, a hose, a shroud where it fits and a sensible working position are the minimum. On site, follow the client's RAMS and the HSE line on silica; in your own shop, set the standard yourself.

Cutting kit: one good grinder beats three bad ones

A 230mm angle grinder is the backbone of a small stone shop. Buy a decent one, ideally with a brake and a guard that actually fits, and keep a cheap 115mm grinder for detail work. Do not buy a no-name 230mm grinder from a marketplace listing and expect it to survive daily cutting of granite or quartz. It will bog, overheat and scare you.

Blades are consumables, but cheap blades are false economy. A proper diamond blade for the material, a continuous rim for hard stone and a segmented blade for faster cutting where the finish allows, will cost more upfront and less per cut. Keep the flanges clean, check for cracks and never run a blade without the guard. A £15 blade that shatters is not a bargain.

Hand tools: buy old steel, not new tat

A mason's mallet, tungsten-tipped chisels, a bolster, a plugging chisel, a pointing trowel, a jointing iron, dividers, a square, a comb, rasps and rifflers will cover most start-up work. Buy the mallet new if you must, but second-hand chisels from a retired mason or a tool auction are often better steel than a £12 set of six from a bargain bin.

Check for mushroomed heads, cracked handles and chips on the cutting edge. A chisel that has been overheated on a bench grinder may never hold an edge again. A vice is not a hand tool, but it belongs in the same conversation: a heavy old Record or Parkinsons vice bolted to a solid bench is worth more than a new lightweight thing that walks across the bench when you tighten it.

Finishing: pads and polisher

You do not need a full polishing station on day one. You do need a variable-speed polisher, a backer pad and a sensible set of diamond pads from coarse to fine. A cheap polisher that bogs down on a worktop edge is a waste of money; a used variable-speed machine from a dealer clearance is often better than a new no-name tool.

Buy pads in the grits you actually use. Most small shops can start with 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500, then add higher grits when a job pays for them. Keep pads clean and separate by grit. Cross-contamination is how you turn a polished edge into a scratched one.

Bench, vice, light and water containment

A solid bench is a flat, heavy thing. An old kitchen worktop on trestles is not. Look for a second-hand joiners' bench, a steel frame bench or a thick slab of timber on a sturdy frame. Bolt the vice through the bench, not just to the top. Add task lighting that you can move, because shadows on stone are where mistakes live.

Water containment can be as simple as a bunded tray, a tarp and a wet vac, but it has to be deliberate. If you are working in a rented unit, check the lease before you start producing slurry. Slurry goes down drains and sets like concrete; that conversation with the landlord is always expensive.

Consumables and fixings

Keep £50 for the boring stuff: silicone, mortar, fixings, masking tape, markers, buckets, sponges and bin bags. It sounds trivial until you are on a job and realise you have no suitable fixings for a 40kg piece of stone. Buy a small stock, keep it tidy and reorder before you run out.

Where second-hand makes sense

Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, eBay, local auction houses and stone yard clearances are all fair game for benches, vices, clamps, tool chests, transformers and hand tools. Check castings for cracks, vice jaws for wear and electrical tools for burnt smells or butchered flexes. If a seller cannot demonstrate a grinder running, price it as a repair or walk away.

Second-hand is not automatically green or cheap. A used 110V transformer may be a bargain; a used diamond blade may be a liability. Buy the safety kit new, buy the grinder from a known brand with spares available, and buy the heavy bench and vice used.

Cheap shortcuts that become expensive mistakes

No RPE and no water control is the big one. After that: cheap blades, undersized grinders, wobbly benches, bad lighting, a vice that will not hold, and buying a full set of lettering chisels before you have lettering work. Each shortcut has a way of showing up on a real job, usually at the worst moment.

What £750 does not buy

It does not buy a bridge saw, a proper extraction booth, a forklift or a dust-free polishing room. It does not buy you a fully compliant workshop if you are cutting silica-heavy stone every day. What it does buy is a safe, honest start: the PPE, the cutting kit, the hand tools and the bench to take on small jobs without borrowing someone else's shop every five minutes.

Spend where the work touches stone, dust and water. Scrimp where the tool just needs to hold something still. Then let the first few jobs pay for the next layer of kit.