SCULPTURING MACHINES

The Romance of Modern Mechanism by Archibald Williams is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CHAPTER XXVI

SCULPTURING MACHINES

The savage who, with a flint point or bone splinter, laboriously scratched rude figures on the walls of his cave dwelling, did the best he was capable of to express the emotions which affect the splendidly equipped sculptor of to-day; he wished to record permanently some shape in which for the time he was interested, religiously or otherwise.

The sun, moon and stars figure largely in primitive religions as objects of worship. They could be easily suggested by a few strokes of a tool. But when mortals turned from celestial to terrestrial bodies, and to the worship of human or animal forms—the "graven images" of the Bible—a much higher level of art was reached by the sculptor, who endeavoured to give faithful representations in marble of the great men of the time and of the gods which his nation acknowledged.

The Egyptians, whose colossal monuments strew the banks of the Nile, worked in the most stubborn materials—basalt, porphyry and granite—which would turn the edge of highly tempered steel, and therefore raise wonder in our minds as to the nature of the tools which the subjects of the Pharaohs must have possessed. Only one chisel, of a bronze so soft that its edge turned at the first stroke [336]against the rock under which it was found, has so far come to light. Of steel tools there is no trace, and we are left to the surmise that the ancients possessed some forgotten method of hardening other metals—including bronze—to a pitch quite unattainable to-day. Whatever were their implements, they did magnificent work; witness the splendid sculptures of vast proportions to be found in the British Museum; and the yet huger statues, such as those of Memnon and those at Karnak, which attract tourists yearly to Egypt.

The Egyptians admired magnitude; the Greeks perfection of outline. The human form in its most ideal development, so often found among a nation with whom athleticism was almost a religion, inspired many of the great classical sculptors, whose work never has been, and probably never will be, surpassed. Great honour awaited the winner in the Olympian games; but the most coveted prize of all was the permission given him—this after a succession of victories only—to erect a statue of himself in the sacred grove near the shrine of Olympian Jove. Happy the man who knew that succeeding generations would gaze upon a marble representation of some characteristic attitude assumed by him during his struggle for the laurel crown.

Until recently the methods of sculpture have remained practically unaltered for thousands of years. The artist first models his idea in clay or wax, on a small scale. He then, if he designs a life-size or colossal statue, erects a kind of iron skeleton to carry the clay of the full-sized model, copied proportionately from the smaller one. When this is finished, a piece-mould is formed from it by applying wet lumps of plaster of Paris all over the surface in such a manner that they can be removed piecemeal, and fitted together to form a complete mould. Into this liquid plaster is run, for a hollow cast of the whole figure, which is smoothed and given its finishing touches by the master hand.

This cast has next to be reproduced in marble. Both the cast and the block of marble are set up on "scale-stones," revolving on vertical pivots. An ingenious instrument, called a "pointing machine," now comes into play. It has two arms ending in fine metal points, movable in ball-and-socket joints. These arms are first applied to the model, the lower being adjusted to touch a mark on the scale-stone, the upper to just reach a mark on the figure. The operator then clamps the arms and revolves the machine towards the block of marble, the scale-stone of which has been marked similarly to its fellow. The bottom arm is now set to rest on the corresponding mark of the scale-stone; but the upper, which can slide back telescopically, is prevented from assuming its relative position by the unremoved portions of the block. The workman therefore merely notices the point on the block at which the needle is directed, and drills a hole into the marble on the line of the needle's axis, to a depth sufficient to allow the arm to be fully extended. This process is repeated, in some cases many thousands of times, until the block has been honeycombed with small holes. The carver can now strike off the superfluous marble, never going beyond the depth of a hole; and a rough outline of the statue appears. A more skilled workman follows him to shape the material to a close copy of the cast; and the [338]sculptor himself adds the finishing touches which stamp his personality on the completed work.

Only a select few of the world's greatest sculptors have ventured to strike their statues direct from the marble, without recourse to a preliminary model. Such a one was Michelangelo, who, as though seized by a creative frenzy, would hew and hack a block so furiously that the chips flew off like a shower, continuing his attack for hours, yet never making the single false stroke that in the case of other masters has ruined the work of months. He truly was a genius, and must have possessed an almost supernatural faculty of knowing when he had reached the exact depth at any point in the great block of marble from which his design gradually emerged.

The formation of artistic models will always require the master's hand; but the reproduction of the cast in marble or stone can now be performed much more expeditiously than is possible with the pointing machine. We have already two successful mechanisms which in an almost incredibly short time will eat a statue out of a block in faithful obedience to the movement of a pointer over the surface of a finished design. They are the Wenzel Machine Sculptor and Signor Augusto Bontempi's Meccaneglofo.

THE WENZEL SCULPTURING MACHINE

In the basement of a large London business house we found, one dark November afternoon, two men at work with curious-looking frameworks, which they swayed backwards and forwards, up and down, to the accompaniment of a continuous clattering of metal upon stone. Approaching nearer, we saw, lying horizontally in the centre of the machine, a small marble statue, its feet clamped to a plate with deep notches in the circumference. On either side, at equal distances, were two horizontal blocks of marble similarly attached to similar plates. The workman had his eyes glued on a blunt-nosed pointer projecting from the middle of a balanced frame. This he passed slowly over the surface of the statue, and simultaneously two whirring drills also attached to the frame ate into the stone blocks just so far as the movement of the frame would permit. The drills were driven by electric power and made some thousands of revolutions per minute, throwing off the stone they bit away in the form of an exceedingly fine white dust.

It was most fascinating to watch the almost sentient performance of the drills. Just as a pencil in an artist's hands weaves line into line until they all suddenly spring into life and show their meaning, so did the drills chase apparently arbitrary grooves which united, spread, and finally revealed the rough-hewn limb.

Every now and then the machinist twisted the footplates round one notch, and snicked the retaining bolts into them. This exposed a fresh area of the statue and of the blocks to the pointer and the drills. The large, coarse drills used to clear away the superfluous material during the earlier stages of the work were replaced by finer points. The low relief was scooped out, the limbs moulded, the delicate curves of cheek and the pencilling of eyebrows and lips traced, and in a few hours the copies were ready for the usual smoothing and finishing at the hands of the human sculptor.

According to the capacity of the machine two, four, or six duplicates can be made at the cost of a little more power and time. Nor is it necessary to confine operations to stone and marble, for we were shown some admirable examples of wooden statues copied from a delicate little bronze, and, were special drills provided, the relations could be reversed, bronze becoming passive to motions controlled by a wooden original.

"Sculpturing made easy" would be a tempting legend to write over the Wenzel machine. But it would not represent the truth. After all, the mechanism only copies, it cannot originate, which is the function of the sculptor. It stands to sculpturing in the same relation as the printer's "process block" to the artist's original sketch, or the lithographic plates to the painter's coloured picture. Therefore prejudice against machine-made statues is as unreasonable as objection to the carefully-executed replica of a celebrated painting. The sculptor himself has not produced it at first hand, yet his personality has been stamped even on the copy, for the machine can do nothing except what has already been done for it. The machine merely displaces the old and imperfect "pointing" by hand, substituting a method which is cheaper, quicker, and more accurate in its interpretation of the model.

It is obvious that, apart from sculpture proper, the industrial arts afford a wide field for this invention. In architecture, for instance, carved wood and stonework for interiors and exteriors of buildings have been regarded hitherto as expensive luxuries, yet in spite of their cost they are increasingly indulged in. The architect now has at his disposal an economical method of carving which will enable him to utilise ornamental stonework to almost any degree. Sculptured friezes, cornices, and capitals, which, under the old régime, would represent months of highly paid hand labour, may now be reproduced rapidly and in any quantity by the machine, which could be adapted to work on the scaffolding itself.

What will become of the stonemasons? Won't they all be thrown out of work, or at least a large number of them? The best answer to these questions will be found in a consideration of industries in which machinery has replaced hand work. Has England, as a cotton-spinning nation, benefited because the power-loom was introduced? Does she employ more operatives than she would otherwise have done, and are these better paid than the old hand weavers? All these queries must have "Yes!" written against them. In like manner, if statuary and decoration becomes inexpensive, twenty people will be able to afford what hitherto was within the reach of but one; and an industry will arise beside which the output of the present-day monumental mason will appear very insignificant. The sculpturing machine undoubtedly brings us one step nearer the universal House Beautiful.

A complete list of the things which the versatile "Wenzel" can perform would be tediously long. Let it therefore suffice to mention boot-lasts, gun-stocks, moulds, engineering patterns, numeral letters, and other articles of irregular shape, as some of the more prosaic productions which grow under the buzzing metal points. Some readers may be glad to hear that the Wenzel promises another hobby for the individual who likes to "use his hands," since miniature machines are purchasable which treat subjects of a size not exceeding six inches in diameter. No previous knowledge of carving is necessary, and as soon as the elementary principles have been mastered the possessor of a small copier can take advantage of wet days to turn out statuettes, busts, and ornamental patterns for his own or friends' mantelpieces. And surely a carefully finished copy in white marble of some dainty classic figure or group will be a gift well worth receiving! The amateur photographer, the fret-sawyer, and the chip-carver will have to write "Ichabod" over their workshops!

The Wenzel has left its experimental stage far behind. The German Emperor, after watching the creation of a miniature bust of Beethoven, expressed his delight in a machine that could call a musician from lifeless stone. The whole of the interior decoration of the magnificent Rathaus, Charlottenburg, offers a splendid example of mechanical wood carving, which tourists would do well to inspect.

We may now pass to

THE BONTEMPI SCULPTURING MACHINE,

for such is the translation of the formidable word Meccaneglofo. This machine is the invention of Signor Augusto Bontempi, a native of Parma, who commenced life as a soldier in the Italian army, and while still young has won distinction as a clever engineer.

His machine differs in most constructional details from the Wenzel. To begin with, the pressure of the drills on the marble is imparted by water instead of by the hand; secondly, the block to be cut is arranged vertically instead of horizontally; thirdly, the index-pointer is not rigidly connected to the drill frame, but merely controls the valves of hydraulic mechanism which guides the drills in any required direction. The drills are rotated by electricity, but all their other movements come from the pressure of water.

Undoubtedly the most ingenious feature of the Bontempi apparatus is the pointer's hydraulic valve, which gives the drills a forward, lateral, or upward movement, or a compound of two or three movements. When the pointer is not touched all the valve orifices remain closed, and the machine ceases to work. Should the operator pull the pointer forwards a water-way is opened, and the liquid passes under great pressure to a cylinder which pushes the drill frame forward. If the pointer be also pressed sideways, a second channel opens and brings a second cylinder into action, and the frame as a whole is moved correspondingly, while an upward twist operates yet a third set of cylinders, and the workman himself rises with the drills.

As soon as the sensitive tip of the pointer touches an object it telescopes, and immediately closes the valves, so that the drills bore no further in that direction.

The original and copies are turned about from time to time on their bases in a manner similar to that already described in treating the Wenzel. As many as twenty copies can be made on the largest machines.

Quite recently there has been installed in Southwark, London, a gigantic Bontempi which stands 27 feet high, and handles blocks 5 feet 6 inches square by 10 feet high, and some 20 tons in weight. Owing to the huge masses to be worked only one copy can be made at a time; though, doubtless, if circumstances warranted the expense, a machine could be built to do double, triple, or quadruple duty. The proprietors have discovered an abrasive to grind granite—ordinary steel chisels would be useless—and they expect a great demand for columns and monumental work in this stubborn material, as their machines turn out finished stuff a dozen times faster than the mason.

An interesting story is told about the early days of Signor Bontempi's invention. When he set up his experimental machine at Florence, the workmen, following the example of the Luddites, rose in a body and threatened both him and his apparatus with destruction. The police had to be called in to protect the inventor, who thought it prudent to move his workshop to Naples, where the populace had broader-minded views. The Florentines are now sorry that they drove Signor Bontempi away, for they find that instead of depressing the labour market, the mechanical sculptor is a very good friend to both proprietor and employé.

Note.—For information and illustrations the author has to thank Mr. W. Hanson Boorne, of the Machine Sculpture Company, Aldermary House, London, E.C., and Mr. E. W. Gaz, secretary of the Automatic Sculpture Syndicate, Sumner Street, Southwark.

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