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Raising large stones

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Mike Waller (U4782937) on Wednesday, 1st September 2010

  Some years ago I had the problem of raising a caste concrete finial, weighing about 100 pounds, onto a column I had built which was about 12 feet high. Not wishing to pay for a crane, the solution I adopted was to put the finial on a wooden sledge which was then rolled onto a ladder, angled to reach about a third of the height of the column. The high end of the ladder was supported by a bar which also acted as a fulcrum. Once the sledge had been levered up to this fulcrum, the lower end was then easily raised to a point at which another bar/fulcrum supported by a frame could be inserted under it. Once the mid point of the finial had been levered to that fulcrum, what had started as the high end of the ladder was easily moved to the top of the column and the finial maneuvered into place. The question that has interested me ever since is could a similar technique have been used by ancient peoples to work much larger stones into place?

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 1st September 2010

  I am not aware of practical examples to be honest.
  
  Sapiens you, sapiens them thus what worked for you would had certainly worked for them and it is more probable than not that this technique would had been used.
  
  However much of the heavy weight moving around was done by pushing on low friction surfaces and erection was then done by wooden-metal cranes which probably had - how this is called, non-return locks? The large of those cranes could lift easily objects of more than 1tn easily with the use of multiple ropes tied to levers and dragged by several 10s of men and horses pulling in the typical hey-hop way and step by step lifting the piece. Accidents were in the programme and thus most often the crane would be over-engineered for the weights to be carried. For really huge buildings like the pyrapids, the use of sliperry ramps was the first think to apply. Mind you, rails existed since bronze age and lifting things on ramps of a small angle by pushing a wagon was a relatively relaxed way of lifting up things.

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