Mystery manufacturing processes - GIFs

[FEM2008]

Could have been Bank vault door frame on the last one.

[IAMSatisfied]

As the camera pans over the wall, stop the video at about the 8 second mark and you'll notice cross-hatch marks engraved in the nearer stones... which leads me to believe they might be grain grinding stones. You can also see in the wall construction that these discs are of varying thicknesses... some have no hole, some one and others two. In the pile to the left of the wall you'll see stone cylinders, which may have been used to grind grain in this manner:



Here's another photo that may indicate surplus/worn/defective wheels are in abundance in China:

[old kodger]

As the camera pans over the wall, stop the video at about the 8 second mark and you'll notice cross-hatch marks engraved in the nearer stones... which leads me to believe they might be grain grinding stones. You can also see in the wall construction that these discs are of varying thicknesses... some have no hole, some one and others two. In the pile to the left of the wall you'll see stone cylinders, which may have been used to grind grain in this manner:



Here's another photo that may indicate surplus/worn/defective wheels are in abundance in China:

So what you're suggesting is that the "buttons" are worn out grinding wheels? What they're building is still a mystery.

[old kodger]

A thought, a New Mexico guy known as The Garbage Warrior (Michael Reynolds I think), builds houses called Earth Ships out of old tires, maybe this is the Chinese equivalent.

[IAMSatisfied]

My wife & I ran in to Mike Reynolds several years back at a grocery store in Taos & struck up a conversation with him (this was after the 2007 "Garbage Warrior" documentary was made on his work, both building earthships and his work a the NM legislature lobbying for more lenient laws allowing flexibility for folks to experiment with different building materials & techniques in their own homes). In that conversation he expressed his dislike for the term "Garbage Warrior", which the media pinned on him without his consent.

BTW, the aforementioned documentary is available to be watched "free" for Amazon Prime members here: https://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Warri...p;qid=&sr=

Back to the stone discs: the mystery about these to me is "why have these discs been collected together? If I were to wager an educated guess, it would be that in the 1950's, when the Communists in China initiated their theft of private property from farmers and the collectivization of farmland in what they called the "Great Leap Forward", they also confiscated tools used to farm the land. If these are indeed millstones, I'm thinking they were confiscated/stolen from family farms and stored in this location for future use. I've reached out to a Chinese American author (whose great-grandfather's farm was taken by the Communists) to see if she can shed light on the "boneyard" in this video, and await her reply.

[Jon]

Alright, finally a mystery Here are some more of the stone building ones. These might give us a hint as to the provenance of the stones.



I like this cart. Fun fact: Mesoamerican pyramids and stone structures built by cultures such as the Aztecs and Incas were done without carts. They were aware of some of the utility of the wheel (like a pottery wheel), and the wheel exists in some of their artifacts (like children's toys), but they did not use wheels for transport. This means no draft vehicles, and no wheelbarrows. They also had little to no metalworking (mostly ornamental precious metals, and a little copper working), and thus their construction methods did not employ nails. Two of the most valuable things that the Spanish conquistadors brought to the Americas in the 1500s were knives (historian Hugh Thomas says that a good Spanish knife could be traded for two Mesoamerican daughters) and nails.





These China GIF sets often include a clip of the workers dancing:


Is this the Chinese version of Bolognese Umarell - retired men who stand around construction sites and offer usually unwanted advice?

[old kodger]

I wouldn't mind getting one of the "buttons" I recon they'd make a great wet stone sharpening wheel.

[Jon]

I renamed this thread "Mystery manufacturing processes". Anyone know this one?

[old kodger]

well, clearly it's a mechanical cornet duet, (shame there's no sound, I would have liked to hear the music)

[IntheGroove]

Whatever it does, it does it gently...