701 replies to this topic

[cormac mac airt]

lilthor, on 07 October 2012 - 08:10 PM, said:

So, their tools degraded at more than twice the rate of work progress?

As a feasible method for cutting many thousands of huge stone blocks, color me sceptical.  In fact, there's no way.

I think you missed something there lilthor. 3 centimeters deep by 19 centimeters long would be 1.18 inches and 37.4 inches respectively. 7.5 MILLImeters is 0.29 inches. So their tools aren't claimed to have degraded twice as fast.

cormac

[lilthor]

cormac mac airt, on 07 October 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

I think you missed something there lilthor. 3 centimeters deep by 19 centimeters long would be 1.18 inches and 37.4 inches respectively. 7.5 MILLImeters is 0.29 inches. So their tools aren't claimed to have degraded twice as fast.

cormac

Thanks...I should go back to watching football now.

[Oniomancer]

Adding some more reference material.

I don't seem to've posted this here before though I meant to and since the issue of drilling precise holes in stone has come up elsewhere of late:



Another reference on Maori stoneworking, some of it repeated from the previous but most not:

http://nzetc.victori...body-d5-d6.html

More examples of hand-powered stone-cutting methods:

http://www.vam.ac.uk...ahans-jade-cup/

http://www.thecarvin...dpost__p__24266

[DingoLingo]

I would just like to point outline thing when I comes to crafting the stones that no one has really pointed out..

You must remember that crafting was handed down from father to son.. A son would learn from his fathers knee so to speak.. So when it comes to craftsmen from ancient to basically up to the 1700 - 1800 you would learn your fathers craft.. There was no tech schools.. When new methods were invented that were faster the old ways died off.. You can see this in black smithing.. Up to at least 60 years ago you could find a smithy to make you pretty much anything you needed out of metal.. Now days.. Smiths are a hobbyist group.. True smiths are rare.. And all of them are trying to learn how things were done before.. There are groups and forums that discuss their ideas on how something was made.. They will test and trial techniques and show what does work and what doesn't..

So when your asking someone to recreate a stone block that is hundreds or thousands of years old.. You actually asking them to recreate techniques that have been lost in time..

Just give you a example.. Flint tools.. Not everyone can pick up a piece of flint and nap a skinning blade.. It looks simple to do because a trained flint napper has learned the skill..

[Abramelin]

Oniomancer, on 09 December 2012 - 02:59 AM, said:

Adding some more reference material.

I don't seem to've posted this here before though I meant to and since the issue of drilling precise holes in stone has come up elsewhere of late:



Another reference on Maori stoneworking, some of it repeated from the previous but most not:

http://nzetc.victori...body-d5-d6.html

More examples of hand-powered stone-cutting methods:

http://www.vam.ac.uk...ahans-jade-cup/

http://www.thecarvin...dpost__p__24266

That's one for my blog here !!

Thanks Oniomancer.

[Banksy Boy]

I'm not quite sure what the point of your video is trying to prove there.

You do realise stone masons are fully conversant with a chisel and how to handle them don't you ?

Now if you showed me a video using copper chisels doing the same task then your video may have a point. However it's interesting clip none the less showing a craftsman doesn't require an air tool to achieve something.

[questionmark]

Banksy Boy, on 16 December 2012 - 11:20 AM, said:

I'm not quite sure what the point of your video is trying to prove there.

You do realise stone masons are fully conversant with a chisel and how to handle them don't you ?

Now if you showed me a video using copper chisels doing the same task then your video may have a point. However it's interesting clip none the less showing a craftsman doesn't require an air tool to achieve something.

If you bother to learn about it, you would find out that arsenic bronze (as used by the ancient Egyptians) is almost as hard as high carbon steel, which was used to chisel stone of all large monuments from 200 BC to 1850 when Charles Bessemer invented the steel making process named after him.  And if you would bother to check a little further you would learn that bronze tools, as used in ancient Egypt, were used as matter of course until iron could be mined in large quantities around the 17th century.

[Abramelin]

Banksy Boy, on 16 December 2012 - 11:20 AM, said:

I'm not quite sure what the point of your video is trying to prove there.

You do realise stone masons are fully conversant with a chisel and how to handle them don't you ?

Now if you showed me a video using copper chisels doing the same task then your video may have a point. However it's interesting clip none the less showing a craftsman doesn't require an air tool to achieve something.

I assume that was directed at me, but it was Oniomancer's post I quoted.

Anyway, what Oniomancer's post showed is that people use soft steel chisels, that they have to change chisels every 5 minutes, and that with lots of sweat and patience they create master pieces with great accuracy.

And the Incas used a kind of hardened copper/bronze chisels they must have had to change every 5 minutes too, no doubt.

http://www.unexplain...8#commentsStart

.

Edited by Abramelin, 16 December 2012 - 02:39 PM.

[Oniomancer]

"the blades are not sharp but rounded as they do not cut or chip the stone so much as pulverize it a few thousand molecules at a time"

In addition to the precision of the hole by hand means, I wanted to get that point across, or rather the lack thereof. If that's plain mild steel, it's only about mohs 5. Of course if it's hardened, more like 7 or 8. It depends on how they mean soft. That aside, a tool only has to be as hard or slightly harder than the material it's used on to crush it, possibly less even given sufficient force.  That fits the profile for the stone pounders, hammers and chisels found in situ.
Stocks showed that flint chisels were effective in working granite, albeit slowly and with significant wastage of the tool over time, much as with copper. He was in fact able to replicate carving several hieroglyphics. This fine control is a point which should not be lost on those such as dunn and childress, who operate on the erroneous premise that copper chisels and large stone pounders were the only tools in use for all phases of fabrication.

[questionmark]

On a previous question on bow lathes, here I have found a video of a craftsman using one in our days:



And here a different model used for lager objects:

Edited by questionmark, 11 March 2013 - 02:10 PM.

[Oniomancer]

Nice one QM. And I thought I'd done good to find this earlier:

Early Wood Lathes


Got a little something else of interest though:

[questionmark]

Oniomancer, on 12 March 2013 - 04:00 PM, said:

Nice one QM. And I thought I'd done good to find this earlier:

Early Wood Lathes


Got a little something else of interest though:

Yep, what the whole fringe does not get is that stone working was first developed about 300k years ago... no surprise that you don't need high technological equipment to work stone.

[zoser]

questionmark, on 03 May 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

In view of the club of the pre-historic diamond-saw coming around trying to tell us that certain things are impossible I decided to start this thread with images, instructions and videos of how things can be done by using tools and methods available since the earliest metal age. In this post we will have splitting granite with a relatively small mallet and a dozen or so metal wedges:



All are invited to post similar evidence of "how it can't be done" here...

Shame it doesn't explain this though:

Cuzco:




These artefacts can be seen all over Peru.  No trace of feathers and wedge marks.

[kmt_sesh]

zoser, on 16 March 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

Shame it doesn't explain this though:

Cuzco:

*Image Snip*


These artefacts can be seen all over Peru.  No trace of feathers and wedge marks.

*Image Snip*


*Image Snip*

And you know this from personal, on-site, professional examination of the monuments? Or are you just taking the word of the fringe crowd (Dunn, von Däniken, et al)?

[questionmark]

kmt_sesh, on 17 March 2013 - 12:51 AM, said:

And you know this from personal, on-site, professional examination of the monuments? Or are you just taking the word of the fringe crowd (Dunn, von Däniken, et al)?

nah, from professionals who missed "material forming by abrasives" in school due to illness.