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Reverse Engineering, From a Drawing, an 18th-Century Frame Carving Machine
A museum tech figures out how to reproduce a lost manufacturing technique
Is there anything worse than when people figure out how to do something clever, but no one bothers to write the process down? It drives me nuts that we'll never really know how they built the Pyramids, for instance. I mean we know it was built by aliens, sure, but we don't know how they did it.
A fellow named Kurt Nordwall, who works at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, also encountered something that no "How It's Made" YouTube video exists of. Not pyramids, but something more recent: Elaborate 18th-Century frames housing the Dutch paintings in the MIA collection. As the resident framing technician, Nordwall spent a lot of time studying the elaborate woodwork, and became consumed with how these could have possibly been constructed prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Enter a caption (optional)A little research led him to this diagram of a frame-carving machine.
Enter a caption (optional)With no CG animation showing him how it worked, Nordwall began sketching, trying to figure out how it did what it did.
Enter a caption (optional)
Enter a caption (optional)
Enter a caption (optional)Eventually, and with grant backing from the Roberta Mann Innovation Award, Nordwall was able to construct a hand-powered machine that he can feed the raw frames into to produce different carvings. Check this out:
Next step: Getting Nordwall to Egypt.
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Nobody bothered to write it down? I'll grant you it's not a hotly researched field, but there is certainly a fair amount of information on the period technology, and current reproductions to be found. I list a few of the recent references in the post (Link below) I made a few years back on the topic, including articles from Fine Woodworking and Furniture and Cabinet Maker Magazine and others. Lets not forget the historical texts like Diderot's encyclopedia, and Roubo which may not have the process explained as we enjoy consuming it on youtube, but has allowed folks to recreate the mechanism with a bit of modern ingenuity thrown in. http://bit.ly/RippleMolding
Fascinating! I'd love to know what the engineering is behind the crank handle shape. Ergonomic? Functional? Aesthetic?
I'm in awe of the craftsmanship and attention to detail. And best of all that he's going to put his own mark on it! So what about "MIA"? I live in Minneapolis and I think with the new re-branding we are supposed to say phonetically, "MEEAH". Ridiculous I know. But just saying.