One thing that always fascinates me is how much (or indeed how little) technology can change some processes. Technology almost always makes things better, faster and cheaper but you’d think there’s a few areas where technology simply couldn’t put a dent in good old fashioned human processes. I don’t know why but when I saw the following video I thought there would be no way that modern processes could be better suited to the task than simply giving it over to a stone mason. By the end of the video however I was stunned at just how fast, and accurate, we could mill out a giant block of sandstone.
Honestly I probably should have expected it as I’ve seen numerous demonstrations of similar technology producing wildly intricate show pieces using all sorts of material. However I figured something like this, a craft that many would have thought was now in the domain of only a handful of dedicated practitioners, would be better suited to human hands. I have to say though that I doubt anyone today could carve out something like that in the space of 10 hours, even if you counted in all the preparation time they did before hand. It’s surprisingly hard to find out just how long it took to carve your average stone gargoyle unfortunately so I’m not sure how this compares to times when stone carving a s a profession was more common.
Realistically though that’s all a flimsy premise for me to post yet another large engineering demonstration video. I can’t help it though, they tickle me in all the right ways 🙂
