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It is an interesting read for it reveals the total inadequacies of manually cutting granite with copper saws. The Stocks experiment demonstrates that a little over 2mm per hr can be cut with the dry sand method and 2.7mm for the wet sand method and this makes for very slow progress. Cutting down Khufu's sarcophagus for example (height over 41 inches) would have therefore taken over 20 days nonstop or 40 daylight working days. Stocks suggested an experienced Egyptian team would have halved the cutting duration (20 working days), and this is for just one side of the sarcophagus.
The errors that the masons made on the outside surfaces of the sarcophagus have been mentioned on another board but I draw attention again to the cutting anomalies on the North end near the West side where the saw was run about 2.5mm too deep and then backed out again. Two inches lower the masons erred again. They didn't try to polish it away as they did on the inside of the sarcophagus where similar errors were made with a drilling device (not held vertical). The question I therefore pose for the outside cutting errors made by the masons is this : Why, if the cutting was so slow, did the masons allow the error to occur in the first place. Were they not attentive to the angle of the saw as it slowly ground down through the granite at approx 5mm per hour ? Surely an offset error of 2.5mm or more would have been noticed before it occurred. It suggests that the rate of cut was much more rapid (at least 20 - 50 times faster) which then suggests that the cutting would have to be made by a mechanical device. Have I missed something here or is there some other explanation for this particular example of stone cutting ?</HTML>
