Stonehenge 181
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Stonehenge

Stone shifting 5

FourWinds F
FourWinds Sep 17, 2003 09:13:24
Replying to Steve Gray

It has already been proved that hide-ropes could do the job. There was that silly TV prog where they tried to recreate old things (like Archimedes' boat lifter etc) which did loads of strain testing on them.

I think this has already been credibly proven, so you really shouldn't worry too much about it. You could easily find out the actual breaking strains measured , match it with modern rope and quote the research.

As a note on expense - the program originally wanted to do their project with authentic materials, but they were told it would take about a year to produce enough and be VERY expensive.

S Steve Gray
Steve Gray Sep 17, 2003 09:46:24
Replying to FourWinds

From a H&S viewpoint we would probably have to exceed the estimated breaking strain by a considerable margin.

If, for example, it was thought that a 2" neolithic rope would have been up to the job, then we should use a 2" modern rope whose breaking strain will be considerably more, thus satisfying H&S, but its handling characteristics should be somewhat similar. I think this would be better than using a 1" rope with a similar breaking strain.

N nigelswift
nigelswift Sep 17, 2003 09:49:29
Replying to FourWinds

It IS very expensive, maybe £100+ per metre for the thickest (unless they decided to do it for the prestige), and you're right, the point may not be worth proving at that price, but I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that we may have a very sexy product here and be able to obtain some big sponsorship and grants. Once the website is up, and if we get it right, we can approach any number of potential sponsors with quite a degree of cred. I keep thinking of £100K lottery grant for the Millenium Bluestone project... we're going to do something much more spectacular, and so far we're only thinking of an expenditure amounting to a lorry load of timber. £3K to buy rope in exchange for a mention would be cheap publicity for a lot of firms.

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