Hi Nigel
I've been talking to Wally via email, seems a nice guy, he's had the same problems getting anyone to listen and not a cent of funding either.
I suggested we try to get TV interested in a "stone shifting challange" Britain vs. America, what do you reckon?
Steve would certainly be interested in his ideas on pyramid building. He uses the corner of the pyramid as a pivot point to raise the stones.
Meanwhile I'm busy trying to rent a field (preferably with a good steep slope on it) for the 10 ton experiment.

I agree that stone rowing is better than pebble swivelling, and certainly the rocking method of lifting stones appears to use a lot less timber than the crib method and can be done in a more confined space. Both methods demonstrate that toppling a big stone *upright* into a hole is feasible in a short timescale with a small workforce and simple materials and I think this needs to be taken on board as a viable theory by the archaeological community.

Wally's method of raising a stone uses some hefty timber posts to retain the packing pieces and for a bigger lift these would need to be considerably stronger and would need to be planted securely into the ground quite close to the hole. I seem to remember that some of the hole profiles did indeed have some possible pits associated with them. It would be a nice bonus for Wally if these could be shown to be consistent with his method.

I've made a clip of Gordon's video to include on the stonehengineers website, but due to pressure of work, progress on the website is pitiful at the moment. Anyway as a temporary measure I have added a link to Gordon's video to the home page. You may need to refresh the page to see the new link. The clip is fairly heavily compressed for modem users, but on the final website I will probably have the choice of a larger, less compressed clip for broadband users.