Early technique in cutting stones

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by arauca, Jan 11, 2012.

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  1. river

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    Trippy
    why

    were talking about 100,000 thousandths of an inch and your not impressed ?

    are you not capable of understanding or grasping what that means , the implications

    perhaps you need time to grasp the significance of the precision they had
     
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  3. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    That's what happens when you ask vague and ambiguous questions. But again, my point remains.

    Instead, workers would chip away at hard stone with tools made from comparatively harder types of stone. Such is the case with the extraction of granite, where dolerite balls were pounded against the rock's surface in order to cut into it.
    Source

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    Source

    As for how long it would take to quarry a block? :shrug:
     
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  5. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Not what I said.

    I said I was unimpressed by the article.

    Perhaps you need some time to understand what that means?
     
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  7. river

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    if you went to the link that I supplied , a few posts ago , you would have relised that a , " round ball " of diorite cannot give any precision in the squareness of the sides
     
  8. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    This:
    Is a misrepresntation of what I have actually said.

    Perhaps you should take some time to re-read what I have said, for example this:
    And understand how it relates to what I just posted.

    And go back, and re-read the links I provided as sources, and understand how the fact that, for example, the red granite quarries are right next to silicified sandstone quarries in an area that has been occupied for 20,000 years to make grinding stones (you know, the things you would use to finish a rough hewn granite block).

    Besides which, we have actual evidence that is actually how the egyptians worked granite - I even posted a picture of an unfinished obelisk that precisely supports this theory.

    What you're doing is pointing at a finished product and demanding that it be produced, fully formed within the quarry, while ignoring the simple fact that even today, producing things still requires multiple steps.

    Incidentally, it's Dolerite not Diorite. They are very different materials
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2012
  9. river

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    perhaps

    but you still have to account for the precision
     
  10. wlminex Banned Banned

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    Revisit my post:

    "r-e-p-e-t-i-t-i-o-u-s . . . . . s-l-o-w . . . . rubbing of 'rocks-on-rocks' will create flat (and tight-fit, matched) surfaces on each half of the rock pair . . . . a mutual grinding, abrasive process
     
  11. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    What precision?

    The article doesn't give any specific precision for the rocks.
     
  12. river

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    “ Originally Posted by Trippy
    Show me anything that suggests a requirement for a 70 ton block to be anything other than rough hewn and then subsequently worked? ”

    And understand how it relates to what I just posted.

    using what material

    so you have a piece of the actual granite that Egyptians used ?



    yeah kind of problematic isn't it

    " even today takes multiple steps "

    so what your saying is that they were on the same level as we are now

    noted
     
  13. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    As has been pointed out, multiple times, rubbing two rock against each other will produce two paralell equally smooth faces.

    The only thing that's required is the ability to rub the two pieces of granite against each other.
     
  14. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Trippy, note the wording of the paragraph and how River has misused what it says:

    The following series of photographs were taken inside the Serapeum on August 27, 2001. Those taken of me inside one of these huge boxes show me inspecting the squareness between a 27 ton lid and the inside surface of the granite box on which it sits. The precision square I used was calibrated to .00005 inch (that is 5/100,000 of an inch) using a Jones & Lamson comparitor.

    The SQUARE he is using has been calibrated to that level of precision.
    Nothing in the article shows how close rocks are to being that square.
     
  15. river

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    how so ?

    if both of the pieces of granite are of equal hardness how does the grinding happen ?
     
  16. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Finishing could be achieved either with other pieces of granite, or it could be achieved with the nearby silicified sandstone, which has approximately the same hardness as granite (or some granites).

    I posted a picture of an unfinished Obelisk that was to be 43m long, but they abandoned it late in the game because they found a crack.

    No, that's not what I'm saying in the slightest.

    I am simply saying that it was manufactured as a multi stage process.

    Baking bread is a multi stage process.
    Brewing beer is a multi stage process.
    Making a fishook from a bone is a multi stage process.

    In this case, all I am saying is that it was constructed as a multistage process.
    First you extract the rough hewn, raw material.
    Then you can finish it.
    You can even further refine the finishing if you choose to.

    It is simply a matter of how much time and effort you're willing to put into it, and that is simply a reflection of how important precision is to you at a spiritual or philosophical level.
     
  17. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    LOL

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  18. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed.

    From Wiki:

    South American natives used garnets and sapphires to work other stones. A sapphire point can be affixed to a wooden handle by the usual technique of splitting the end of the wood, inserting the stone, wrapping it in with leather or string, then saturating the bindings with copal or similar. A device similar to the small bow that was used to start fires was used with garnet sand to drill very small holes in jade - another extremely hard stone to work. The same technique would work quite well for drilling larger holes in another stone - especially something as easy to work as red sandstone. (Yes I have worked it myself)

    I found complete sapphire crystals (hardness 9.5) in a feldspar matrix at a place called the Craigmont outside of Bancroft, Ontario. Granite is not that hard to work either, the is a big granite quarry in Barre, Vermont where huge blocks of "Barre Grey" are pulled daily for various projects all around the world.
     
  19. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Same reason it happens in nature - if I take two things of equal hardness, and rub them against each other for long enough, the wear each other down.

    It's the same basic principle as Tumble finishing (but it didn't occur to me to consider the use of sand and silt between the blocks, but now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense to do so).
     
  20. river

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    is this sandstone as hard as the granite used in the pyramids ?
     
  21. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Thanks for that nice to see some (more) common sense being introduced into the conversation.

    Yeah, I don't know why that didn't occur to me. All you need is some reasonable outcrops of Garnet schists (for example) and bob's you're uncle, but it's the same basic principle I mentioned with the quartz.

    Certainly the Andes, being as tectonicly active as they are, would seem to be a reasonable place to look for such things.
     
  22. river

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    but the diorite were balls of

    not square
     
  23. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Silicified sandstone has a hardness of 7 (it's quartz sand embedded in a matrix of quartz).

    Granite has multiple minerals with hardness ranging from as low as 2, to as high as 7.

    The red colour of Aswan Granite comes from a high content of Orthoclase which has a hardness of 6, suggesting the granite has a hardness of between 6 and 7, so it seems reasonable to suppose that yes, silicified sandstone would be sufficiently hard to polish Aswan granite.
     
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