Are we Luddites?

I feel it is a tragedy that skills are lost but I am also sure that they can be relearned even if there is no one left to teach them. I have learned much from reading and with a resource like you tube many things can be demonstrated . Perhaps it should be important to record skills in action to give anyone a head start who wishes to restart a lost skill.

Mike

I think it's a matter of perspective Howard, young people have skills, they're just different. Skills change over time. If a time machine took us back to 1918 I reckon we would be well out our depths due to missing skills. Do you know how to send telegrams, read a Bradshaw or use an open razor? Competent handling horses, hard collars, night soil etiquette, and haggling in a market? Could any of us get a low-paid job as a tailor, stoker, footman, seaman, cabbie or iron-moulder? How many could prove they had a basic education by reciting in order the names of all the bays, capes, rivers and sea-ports around the British coastline? Or quote knowledgeably from the Ingoldsby Legends? How good is your Greek and Latin? Do you know how to recognise the aristocracy and all the other social layers and know how to behave? How about buying food that's far from fresh? And the vital significance of hats? If you got a job as a turner, how good are you with a steam driven belt line system, carbon steel tooling and mixing your own suds? I think the experience might end badly because we are so uselessly weird by their standards.

Even worse if the time machine cocked up the return journey and delivered us by accident to 2118. Goodness only knows what skills will be needed to survive in the future.

Dave

You should always be prepared for a zombie apocalypse

I've seen workshops featured in the magazine that famously refuse to use anything developed after 1940 in their workshop, and I think it's fascinating, and frankly, good for them.

I don't however, i'm quite happy to embrace anything from cnc to stereolithography. I kind of just go with "what works" rather than excluding things, but I still think it's cool when I see other workshops that take a different approach.

Tradition and modernity side by side is the real future. Why choose one when you can have both?

Michael W

Much food for thought in all these posts. I suppose I,m somewhere in the middle,like many others. I do have a calculator and ,electronic calipers,but I prefer to try to use the Mic,to try and get the feel for it,and I dont have CNC,or even a DRO,but I still get along.Perhaps that makes me a Luddite.[I should add that I still have,and use from time to time,my Father,s old hand drill and hand saws !!] I agree,filing a steel cube is a total waste of time,when would anyone ever be called upon to do so,in real life ? A skill in using a file is useful,if not required,but it is not the be all and end all of everything,just another part. Basic skills are still needed and always will be,but life is too short to get too tied up about them,life goes on, things change,and so must we.

Will I ever make it to CNC ?,I doubt it,I find it hard enough to manage a laptop !

However,let us all keep plugging away,till we run out of steam.

I don't much care what other people get up to in the privacy of their own sheds but I do think there was a lot of merit in the old idea of learning basic hand skills before going on to machining, CNC, etc.

Sadly, I never even got to see the inside of the single metalwork room in a school of 1,100 boys but I'll be forever grateful to the brilliant woodwork teacher who taught us how to take a piece of wood, plane it square and true to size, mark out and cut it to length accurately, then mark out and cut various joints, all by hand. I seldom had a use for such skills in my working life but they certainly improved my hand-eye cordination for all manner of other jobs. And I still love a bit of joinery if I get the time.

Now trying to teach myself the same sort of things in metal . . .

Mike.

First, to reiterate some previous comments, the use of the word Luddite in the context of the original post is incorrect, and shows woeful historical knowledge.

Being idle I tend to use whatever technique is quickest, whether that be by hand, manual machining or automated. But then again I'm interested in the destination, not the journey. Machining is simply a means of producing a part, it is not a destination.

The skills needed over time change. For instance take marking out. I rarely mark out now, with a DRO on the mill it's simply not needed, and less accurate. The only exceptions are for hand formed sheetmetal work and some starter points on castings, if required. Some "skills" were just darn hard work, so for me it's no great loss if they die out.

The question of CNC raises it's head with monotonous regularity. In order to get the best from CNC milling a wide skillset is needed. For starters one really needs to be competent with 3D CAD. In addition a good understanding of speeds 'n' feeds and cutting tool performance is needed. Judging from comments on this forum many people simply don't understand this, even on manual machines. One also needs to show forethought and some skill in designing fixtures for work holding so as to not impede the cutter. While CNC is not the answer to everything it allows one to design and make parts that would be time consuming, difficult, or impossible, on manual machines. It also relieves the tedium of making multiple parts. Whether manual machining experience is needed before moving to CNC is a debate that has been raging on the professional forums for many years. I think the consensus now is that it is not needed. Remember that in the professional world the person doing the CNC fixtures and programming is not usually the same person operating the machine. The machine operator is lower skilled and hence cheaper.

While some people bemoan the loss of tradtional skills, I wonder how many of them are prepared to pay for such skills? Wasn't there a company making lathes using traditional manual machining and hand fitting skills? I wonder what happened to them?

I suspect that the disconnect between modelling and professional machining is probably getting wider. When I was looking for ideas on capstan tooling I came across several relevant articles in Model Engineer, in the 1940s I think. Can you imagine the same now?

That's enough pot stirring, I've got an aircraft to inspect and then I'm afternoon tug pilot, although at the moment even the ducks are walking, unless they're instrument rated.

Andrew

True, that. One only has to look at the phenomenally rapid rise of China into a manufacturing superpower. They learned modern tool and die making and other mass production skills in double quick time. Much of that would have been from books on the subject, as well as shared-technology joint ventures.

I like to think that I use a lot of esoteric skills and "dodges" learned on the shop floor from old boys who learned them as lads from even older boys who had been around when the industrial revolution was still revolutionary. But really, in today's world, all those skills and dodges are out there somewhere in any number of books and websites. From the likes of Sparey, GH Thomas, ET Westbury etc through to today's MEW contributors and Youtube channels, there are not many stones left unturned.

And really, modern technology and thinking probably would come up with better solutions than many of the old dodges. Just think if for some reason we had to go back to using horses and carts again today. Would we go back to handcarving wooden wheels like they did in 1890? Hell no. We'd be 3D printing them. And so on. 21st century horse carts would bear little resemblance to and use few of the same manufacturing skills that 19th C ones did. (They'd have USB port chargers built in for starters .)

Edited By Hopper on 26/05/2018 10:52:45

Edited By Hopper on 26/05/2018 10:54:39

I imagine 3D printers will eventually be working at the molecular level to create everything we need . . . probably already happening somewhere

Even then I expect there will still be people ( definitely not luddites ) building steam engines in their sheds, or making fine wooden furniture, or baking cakes, or gardening, etc. The human race evolved over thousands of years to have opposed thumbs so that we could do all those things, so I don't suppose we'll lose the ability for a few more thousand years . . . of course there have always been those humans who have all thumbs

Hi all, I would like to add my four pennorth about Luddites, these were men facing the imminent destruction of their livelihood in a short timescale in times far harder than our own, I can fully understand their anger & in similar circumstances could be tempted to turn right nasty! I would offer the wholesale destruction of the car industry & the vendetta that brought about a similar fate to the coal industry both in the 1980s as modern examples.

However, to return to shed dwellers as Luddites, no, as the editor rightly points out, it is a hobby & what goes on in your man cave is your choice & yours alone, please do not mistake this for carte blanche to believe as I think some do that you are the last bastion of keeping "the old craft skills alive" because its just not going to happen. Examples, shimming up lathe tools to centre height, guess what, after the first time you know everything there is to know on the subject, do not stick packing to tool, by all means fasten it on with a rubber band & even keep tools for multi tool set ups such as face & part off for washers & spacers together in a plastic bag in the top of your toolbox as I was advised to do over 50 years at the start of my apprenticeship. Next, quick change toolposts, bah! modern nancy boy nonsense, but hold on Mr.Dave Lammas fine triangular toolposts are such a good idea that I made 2 in right & left hand versions to be spaced one tee slot apart for repetition work on small parts on a small lathe that I had, not a lot of work to make either. If you wish to travel further back in time, early Drummond lathes around 1918 had a central pillar on the topslide fitted with a square toolblock fastened by a split clamp & height adjustable with a vertical screw, 100 year old technology you say, my preferred roughing out tool is a 55 degree v-point indexable , shaped down to fit the toolpost of the shaper & also a holder as described above on the bigger lathe, the change over between shaper & lathe takes a maximum of 5 seconds. So you pays your money & takes your choice of these old technologies. Finally I have laid hands on various ancient machinery particularly woodworking, lathes, circular saws, some in a heritage wood mill powered by water where you have to direct the water onto the turbine to strike it up, a matter of seconds! Do not forget that it was Leonardo da Vinci who invented the 4 jaw chuck not Harold Hall & also pointed out that a conrod introduced into the driveline of rotating machinery created monodirectional rotation a major boost to productivity. The boy was an Italian, anything could happen! Regards, Bob H

I think the horror fantasies we're building for ourselves are a threat to civilised values through the narrow-minded self-interest such survivalisms promote.

He is grotesquely overrated. Hardly any of his "inventions" had the technology behind them to have them built, or make any valid use of them if they were. His "tank" was such an amateur effort that its wheels would have tried to rotate in opposite directions - it couldn't even move. The 4-jaw chuck was really invented by whoever made it possible to actually grip real work with it in a real machine tool. The conrod was probably already in use on the treadle spinning wheel. Leonardo was an artist, not an engineer.

Edited By Mick B1 on 30/05/2018 11:49:56

There's also the problem of the historical accuracy of the inventions that people have attributed to Leonardo Davinci. You will find on research that a lot of the things people think he made are actually just "he might've done that drawing". That's the trouble when evaluating claims made 500 years ago when documentation was scarce.

I don't believe he pulled his ideas out of the air myself and he must've based his ideas on what people had already tried.

Michael W

Fascinating read, thanks to all contributors

As a newcomer to the hobby, and with a particular interest in making lock picks and a few other parts, I have found it difficult to gain experience. I learn best hands-on, the Axminster Lathe course was brilliant and I gained much more than by tinkering around alone - confidence is the biggest issue and not wanting to make a silly mistake which breaks something. For anyone wanting to pass on their skills for beer tokens, I am open to learning, have some weekends free and willing to travel

It seems to me that CNC will become more affordable and accessible, all industries mature and ours is no exception. There are hackerspaces and MakerFaires all over the country with people developing all sorts of machinery and tooling with real community spirit encouraging and teaching others - I think "we" as hobbyists have a lot to learn and a lot to give. I'm excited by using different technologies - lathe / mill machining parts and 3D printing for example. At some point I hope to acquire a water jet cutter - Wazer deomoed their desktop machine at New York MakerFaire late last year

I see our hobby evolving into something very different as tooling advances and costs fall, probably evolving quicker than at any time in the past, and hopefully staving off the armchair as making things becomes easier over time

I have read an 1835 revision of an 1802 updating of a 1796 revision of a 1721 translation of Leonardo's treatise on painting. What can I say? He was a didactic dilettante. If he was an artist, his work leaves little room for artistry, the book imagines he covers everything worth knowing about painting in 365 chapters (modern definition would call them paragraphs). To give a flavour of Leonardo's actual words (in translation) this is the whole of Chapter 5:

'Chap V, Division of the Figure: The form of bodies is divided into two parts; that is, the proportion of the members to each other, which must correspond with the whole; and the motion, expressive of what passes in the mind of the living figure.'

Vague, unhelpful & didactic. When you look at what he touched and compare it with what he achieved, you can see he actually fiddled with a huge amount of stuff, came up with interesting ideas and showed very little effort in the follow through. Could think of him as an ideas fountain; Someone who comes up with lots of ideas but has no idea of the value of them, whether good or bad. In the way he circled the rich and famous of the day, and the way he addressed letters and notes to them, it is hard to avoid the term 'sycophancy'. I know he came from a different time with different ideas, but he strikes me as someone who has been seriously over-praised.

Regards,

Richard.

I abhor the loss of Britains flint knapping industry.

Seriously though as Niels says the point is to have fun. If that is exploring old techniques for their own sake, learning something new or your focus is on the end product rather than the journey like Andrew all well and good.

Generally engineering and engineers have embraced the latest meathods as soon as they became available wherever possible, you go out of buisness otherwise. Weavers objected to machine looms because it threatened their livelyhood but welcomed machine spinning because it made them more money by lifting the scarecity of spun yarn enabling them to increse production. Robot car production has removed a lot of the production workforce from the manufacture side but we don't have millions of unemployed so they must have upskilled or moved on to other jobs. When all else is said if you increase production you then need more people to sell the things or do repairs.

There are certainly times when it would be more appropriate to use old techniques rather than new. If you are producing period furniture there is a real argument for hand cut dovetails rather than machine cut ones.

But as I say whatever floats your boat.

regards Martin

Oh and shouldn't the 'purists' eschew the use of HSS tooling and only use High Carbon Steel.

;0)

Martin

My thoughts are that CNC is a very useful production machine that can spit out parts by the thousand, in production facilities they are operated by button pushers and serviced by tool setters, the computer programmer designs the component and feeds the programme to the machine, for one offs a CNC machine is both expensive and impractical for the likes of us as we would need a lot of wasted time to produce the odd item. Our skills in the use of hand operated machines can and is put to more practical use in the manufacture of our models.

Martin P

Looking at the original article by Peter King that initiated this topic, it appears that those he labelled "Luddites" threw the first stone. Being told by fellow club members that-of CNC- "It is not Model Engineering" tending to be didactic and confrontational.

For those who have taken on board CNC they may find that their active years in the workshop can be extended. As some of the programming can be done in comfort or generated from CAD then they do not need to spend hours stood at the machine. Setting up is often more interesting than just turning the feed handles. Listening to a number of commentators on this forum indicates that they have to scale back their activities due to health problems that make running a manual machine uncomfortable or impossible, CNC may be a good friend when your own faculties begin to fail

Mike