In my youth I worked summers laying #3 sheeting. I had a Disston handsaw
to cut and a Plumb hammer to nail the #3 SYP sheeting to 2X8 rafters.
Down through the years handsaws were replaced by Skilsaws, hammers with
pneumatic nailers, the twisted & knotty
lumber with plywood CDX and the rafters with 2X4 trusses. As each of
these 'advancements' happened many carpenters deplored the predicted
loss of craftsmanship, losing jobs and wasting years of apprenticeship
due to those damn machines. The increased efficiency and likely better
product didn't bring on the present housing problems and caring
craftsmen like Robert are still around and likely using handsaws and
planes.

So What? Seems to me that in any art or craft there is a sine wave of
changes from simple (pure) to complex (mongrel) to simple again, etc.
The oscillations in style, decoration, fabrication, medium and tools in
furniture, architecture. painting and music are obvious.

I imagine that woodturning will follow similar curves and will probably
come full circle some day, although maybe not all the way back to pole
lathes, wooden trenchers and soup bowls, but who knows? Lots of
previous owners of kevlar canoes are making strip canoes, so it might be
birch bark and dugouts in the years to come.

OK, my tediously stretched out point is that to me laser engraving is
just another point along the sine wave, a computer numerical controlled
cutting system used for decoration instead of fabrication. Lasers for
woodturners are not to be praised or deplored any more than electronic
speed control or revolving tailstock spindles. If lasers advance the
craft/art or are just a novel addition, I'm all for it, but save your
buffers, chatter tools and wood burners boys, the well turned, nicely
finished hand embellished wooden bowl is "gone rise again".


Turn to Safety, Arch
Fortiter


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