Levelling the Stone Dust and Laying the Patio Stones

Using two pieces of 1x4 strapping I made a screed board, screwing one to the other so that from the end it looks like a 'T'. This makes for a fairly rigid while light enough board to manipulate.  I then turned it upside down and slide it along the upper and lower box boards.

It was a tedious process of screeding and then tamping and then adding some more stone dust and repeating the screeding and tamping etc. but it was worth it.Once it was complete the rest was easier because of the attention to detail at this stage.

I decided that as soon as a row of about 3½ feet was done, to roll down a row of landscape cloth which is 3 feet wide, and the first row of patio stones very carefully aligned with the starting edge of the box. I managed to get the patio stones to pack very closely together by placing a stone on its edge on an adjacent stone that is already laid. I would then slowly lower the stone ensuring that as the stone tilted away that it would slide down very tightly to the first stone. Worked like a charm.

The purpose of the landscape cloth is to inhibit weeds from growing between the tiles.