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Stone shifting 4
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Steve Gray
Steve Gray
931 posts

Re: Stone shifting 4
Sep 07, 2003, 12:46
If we are going to use a Spanish windlass, why not use it to pull the stone up? I take your point about anchoring it to the bottom of the stone. That thought had occurred to me. I wondered whether small channels could be left in the base of the hole for two ropes to be laid in and then covered over with chalk rubble to protect them from the impact of the stone dropping. The ends of the rope could be tied to a log laid across the hole on the far side of the stone. Mind you, I don't know if we would be able to remove the ropes afterwards and I'm sure the archaeos won't have found any rope remnants in the holes.

The snag with the idea is that the tower is not far from the hole, so the ropes would have to go up at a fairly steep angle. This increases the required tension in the ropes to considerably more than the 7 tons being exerted on the stone. Used in conjunction with diagonal props, however, we could probably arrange that the props take the bulk of the leverage load and the ropes serve only to prevent the props from rising.

Each time you need a new fulcrum log you could insert it so that it bears on the previous one, perhaps with a little rope lashing to stop it from slipping upwards. This way the previous fulcrum logs would become the platform for the men placing the levers.

I'll try to find the time to do some calculation of forces for both methods. Whichever method we use, the forces and distance are much less for 80 degrees than they are for 70 degrees, but we might be constraied by the angle of the hole. On the BBC picture that you have on your website the angle looks more like 50 degrees!
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