scant

A scant is a piece of stone that has been squared off on two faces down to its final bed surface, but left rough or unfinished on the other sides. It sits between a raw quarry block and a fully dressed ashlar. The term appears most often in masonry and stone-cutting trades, where it describes an intermediate stage in stone preparation rather than a finished unit ready for laying.

The two dressed faces are typically the bed (bottom) and back (top when set in a wall), running the full length and width of the stone. This allows the mason to set the stone with predictable thickness and a true bearing surface. The front and sides remain undressed, which keeps labor costs down compared to fully ashlar work, and the irregular face often accepts mortar and pointing better than a slick surface would.

Where scants appear

Scants are most common in rubble masonry, random coursed work, and infill applications where appearance matters less than structural performance. They appear frequently in boundary walls, agricultural buildings, and the inner leaves of cavity work. In finer work such as visible ashlar coursing, fully dressed stones are standard; in rough rubble, completely unworked stones are acceptable. The scant fills a practical middle ground.

The name itself refers to the economy of the piece: it is scant in finish and scant in cost. A mason might order scants by thickness and approximate face dimensions rather than as custom-cut units, relying on the irregularity of the front face to create the visual texture of the wall.