John Pickard wrote: (snip) > This is a rather vexed question: how faithfully should we follow the > early craftsmen and instrunment makers? In my workshop I have a small > milling machine, a medium-sized lathe and a baby lathe (Unimat 3, > best thing since sliced bread!). I have two rotary tables (one I made > myself) capable of dividing a circle into rather tiny bits (don't ask > me how small, I don't know! But I could go down to 1000 divisions > with no problem, other than tedium.) I can drive to the metal store > and buy good sheet brass, etc. The craftsmen had none of this. They > divided circles with dividers (before Ramsden's WONDERFUL engine) and > engraved by hand. > > Or did they? (snip) > > How faithfully should I follow this tradition? Should I attempt to > decipher the arcane geometric descriptions of early diallists, or use > the modern computer programs (Thanks to people like Fer de Vries), > print the design onto clear film, put a photosensitive coating onto > my brass, and expose the design to the sun, wash off the coating, > and etch. Voila, a sundial. (snip)
John, My personal bias favors traditionalism of result. How one arrives at the result is a different question. This is to say, if one computes his dials by aid of a computer and a few spare microseconds, or uses pencil, paper and a set of ancient 4 place log tables, no one looking at the finished dial could tell what method was used in making the computations of the lines. However, as for engraved metal dials, I thnk it would be very difficult to do a photo-engraving/etching job that would have the same appearance as a dial done with traditional metal engraving tools (or, the modern tool equivalents of traditional tools). On the whole, I do not care for modern dials that look modern. Given my 'druthers, I'd prefer to see a well executed dial in paint on an old board that a precise brushed aluminum monstrosity that looks like it came out of a sundial factory with some sort of a barcode engraved on it. However I do not mean to imply that any material in particular is inherently unworthy, nor that any particular assortment of tools is inherenly inappropriate. From my readings in the subject, dialists have always used what was at hand, and were not ashamed of their work. Insofar as I am concerned, the worst that can be said os a dial is that it looks like it was designed by a committee (which, unfortunately seems to be the case for most monumental dials which are now made for public display areas). It would be interesting to hear how others view this subject of aesthetics & dialing. Tom McHugh
