From classical times man has harnessed wind and water to work heavy machinery, to relieve him of hard physical labour and to speed up production. A Roman settlement C.200AD in southern France boasted sixteen water mills for grinding corn. It may be that this form of motive power was used to drive lathes also but […]
Woodworking
Raymond Harvey makes his (wooden) bed
“These are my most important tools”, said my host, looking at two home made knives, one ground from a worn-out hacksaw blade, and an old ‘Surform’ rasp. I was standing in Raymond Harvey’s makeshift back-garden workshop, which reflects his general approach to his work, being a structure consisting completely of recycled materials. There, standing majestic in the […]
How I built Leonardo Da Vinci’s lathe
A simple sketch by the Italian genius Leonardo Da Vinci C.1480 gives us our first glimpse of what an early treadle wheel lathe might have looked like.
