ancient lathe turners in egypt


duckkisser

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ok so wood working is a old skill there have been carpenters forever but i had no idea that the lathe was so old.  here is a article i found while researching stone turning about egyption stone turners who made plate, bowls, jars ect... out of stone.  some group of people made stone turnings in the earliest days of egypt and then the skill was somehow lost.  because aparentily stone turned iteams did not show up else where later in time.  thought it was a cool look through.

 

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/hrdfact3.php

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I'm just failing to envision turning stone on its side without massive machinery that would be documented in some way. I am also not certain what proof they cite that it was turned. Many famous classical stone structures (that are studied as material for imitation with wood) are created with hammer and chisel technology no matter how round. The concept of the grist mill is ancient and a modified concept would have the workpiece stationary and the milling device in rotation. This also would be far more stable with the stone sitting flat instead of upright and spinning.

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Ok, so if you are interested in steam bending and lamination, research Egyptian chariots. The wheel construction is Fascinating! With revolutionary woodworking concepts they took over the known world with a chariot light enough to use over sand.

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This is from wiki dont know how exact it is but at might give an idea of how egyptian lathes were used and then how it evolved.

 

The lathe is an ancient tool, dating at least to ancient Egypt and known and used in Assyria and ancient Greece.

The origin of turning dates to around 1300 BC when the Ancient Egyptians first developed a two-person lathe. One person would turn the wood work piece with a rope while the other used a sharp tool to cut shapes in the wood. Ancient Rome improved the Egyptian design with the addition of a turning bow. In the Middle Ages a pedal replaced hand-operated turning, freeing both the craftsman's hands to hold the woodturning tools. The pedal was usually connected to a pole, often a straight-grained sapling. The system today is called the "spring pole" lathe. Spring pole lathes were in common use into the early 20th century.

One of the first lathes in the UK was the Horizontal Boring Machine that was installed by Jan Verbruggen (article in Dutch Wikipedia) in 1772 in the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. It was horse-powered and allowed for the production of much more accurate and stronger cannon used with success in the American Revolutionary War late 18th century. One of the key characteristics of this Boring Machine was that the object was turning as opposed to the tool making it technically a lathe. (see attached drawing). Henry Maudslay who later developed many improvements to the lathe worked at the Royal Arsenal from 1783 being exposed to this machine in the Verbruggen workshop.[1]

 

During the Industrial Revolution, mechanized power generated by water wheels or steam engines was transmitted to the lathe via line shafting, allowing faster and easier work. Metalworking lathes evolved into heavier machines with thicker, more rigid parts. Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, individual electric motors at each lathe replaced line shafting as the power source. Beginning in the 1950s, servomechanism were applied to the control of lathes and other machine tools via numerical control, which often was coupled with computers to yield computerized numerical control. Today manually controlled and CNC lathes coexist in the manufacturing industries

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