Old and new.

[excoriator]

A visit to an old pub which has been refurbished throughout during the covid lockdowns was something of a revelation. I got chatting to the landlord about the new decor, which I initially took to be the old rather beautiful mouldings and carvings from a hundred years ago, stripped, refurbished and polished. I remarked on what a job it must have been to restore them.

"Oh no!" he said. "It's all brand new. The brewery paid for it, but it wasn't all that expensive I'm told!" He could see the disbelief as the carvings - as far aa I could recall - were really very intricate and detailed and seemed perfect copies. He went on to explain that a company had come around with a 3d laser scanner and digitised all the old carvings. These were then incorporated into a new digital model and the parts produced from the wood with a CNC milling machine. A crew turned up with all the parts and assembled it in a couple of days! All done to within a tenth of a millimetre he boasted.

"Stop!" I said. "If it's made of MDF I don't want to hear more". It probably was.

It set me thinking though. The dumping of the sort of decoration that the Victorians thought essential was probably the result of mass production. If you are making millions of identical items they have to be pretty simple, so out went embellishments and in came clean simple lines. Now we have the capability to make highly decorative things again accurately and economically, I wonder if we shall see a revival of something like Victorian decorativeness?

[aubrey]

That's good, though if it is MDF it might not last long

[excoriator]

Well, I wonder how long it is expected to last. Ten years at the outside I'd say, and then it'll all be replaced again.

For years I used to met a friend of mine once a month or so for a pint or several, in a pub in Liverpool or Birkenhead. During the pandemic we kept up the custom, meeting in the 'Skype Arms' to put the world to rights. However, during this period he's moved to LLangollen.

But, it seems he can get a train to Chester, as can I. His wife has agreed to take him to Ruabon station and pick him up, and it's very easy for me so we are going to try that out next time. We shall have to see what the beer's like!

Unfortunately, I've been looking at the infection, hospital and death rates and infections are going through the roof. You can download the data from the government's site into a spreadsheet and plot graphs. Hospitalisations seem to be following an exponential like curve and have doubled over the past month. So have deaths but the figures are so low that the curve is pretty jagged. All in all, it would appear that the virus is taking no notice whatsoever of Boris' plans to relax all constraints on the 19th. I guess that means it smarter than those that do. I think a lockdown is quite likely.

[jonjel]

When you talked about replicas Exco it reminded me of a very dear friend and gifted sculptor I know. I say know, but not been in touch for a couple of years and know he was not well so hope you are still around David.

He would make a beautiful wax sculpting, mainly horses, following which he would make a silicone rubber mould from which he would cast the finished object in resin. He also rarely had them cast in bronze, a different process but I could never afford those. As I glance up I can count five of his art works on the shelves.

However I digress. He once showed me a fabulous wooden sculpture of I think a lion and asked 'How long do you think it took someone to carve that JJ?' I said, not sure, maybe 40 hours? Nope, the original took 50 hours, but this was a copy done on a copying lathe with a high speed router, and it took just 60 seconds + a very small amount of time to finish it off.

[excoriator]

Don't ask me why but I once found myself after a visit to the Atomium museum in Brussels wandering into a giant exhibition hall nearby. Half of it was devoted to an exhibition of pianos being hammered by scruffy kids and the other half wa an exhibition of industrial woodworking machinery.

I recall a long machine with maybe a dozen routing headss copying an original carving of old arthritic hands clasped in prayer. All were rotating and a stylus followed the original with the router heads all slaved to this. I would guess it might have taken ten minutes to complete, but as there were a dozen produced in that time, 60 seconds each is a fair figure.

[jonjel]

Jul 8, 2021 16:55:21 GMT excoriator said:

Don't ask me why but I once found myself after a visit to the Atomium museum in Brussels wandering into a giant exhibition hall nearby. Half of it was devoted to an exhibition of pianos being hammered by scruffy kids and the other half wa an exhibition of industrial woodworking machinery.

I recall a long machine with maybe a dozen routing headss copying an original carving of old arthritic hands clasped in prayer. All were rotating and a stylus followed the original with the router heads all slaved to this. I would guess it might have taken ten minutes to complete, but as there were a dozen produced in that time, 60 seconds each is a fair figure.

How the world has changed Exco. From the first plug board lathes each making parts identical to the last one, without an operator!

Tomorrow I have been invited to look at a few problems a client is having with some kit I cant really talk about. And his production rate? 100 million a year! That is almost incomprehensible to me and I think works out at something over 800 per minute. Could be an interesting day.

[excoriator]

Maybe you should take Greg Wallace with you.


"Three million cans of beans a day?!!!!!!!"

"WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!"

(Repeat with appropriate changes)


Not a difficult to learn script!