estebanana -> RE: Old standards of measurements (Jun. 6 2017 6:08:55)
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He measured the entire existing kitchen using a lath, making cut marks and emphasizing them with a soft pencil. Then the old kitchen was torn out, the new oak parquet floor was laid, and the cabinet maker set to work. My wife had drawn a lazy susan in a lower corner cabinet, to make better use of the space. The cabinet maker was non-committal about building it. Eventually we were invited to have coffee at his house one evening. His wife served traditional German cookies. After a decent interval we were taken to the shop out back, and shown a working mockup of the lazy susan, made from scrap lumber. The cabinet maker's attitude seemed to be that he was now willing to entertain the idea. I had mentioned that you could buy one ready made, but he was unwilling to risk compromising the quality of the work. That is great story because it not only illustrates the point of using laths to demarcate space and dimension, but you have a work of craftsman's beauty to enjoy and pass to your kids. I can imagine the German cabinet maker came from the New Braunfels area where the German immigrant workers landed and began a community South of Austin. Even today a good stair builder or custom cabinet maker or carpenter working on complex wood trim jobs or old houses needs to use templates now and then. Carpenters now often keep a hot glue gun in the tools collection and use to to frame together thin plywood strips ripped down 3" or 4" wide. A Japanese saw, pencil, razor knife and a steel ruler are used to fit a template into a niche or shape that will receive a tightly fit bit of wood work. Templates built up with a glue gun and ply are commonly used to calculate things like stair landing shapes and foot prints for cabinets that fit into old buildings with skewed walls, etc. Lath templates and '3,4,5' trick can be used to lay out anything from a small house to a pyramid. Until good lazer levels became cheap about 15 years ago, 3,4,5 and templates were common layout tools and ideas. I still would lay out a house with patterns, carpenters square and 3,4,5. 3,4,5 enables you to create a 90 degree angle with the construction of a right triangle. The construction can be done with any type of measurement unit so long as they are uniform. One side is 3 units long, anther side 4 units long and pulling them together with one side 5 units long creates a 90 degree angle where sides 3 and 4 meet and make a corner. It's how you lay out the walls of a house or pyramid an create them square. This is important because it is trick #1 in preindustrial instrument building when the luthier wanted to create a 90 degree angle if there were no industrially made T -Squares, squares or triangles available. Say you wanted to make a triangle out of a plank of wood so you could hold it up to your ribs to see if they are 90 off the solera....well you take the plank, rule out 4 units with a ruler, put a nail right at the ends on 0 and 4. Tie a length of string nail to nail. Tie a another length of string at each nail at 0 and 4. Measure out 3 units on string and put a knot or pencil mark at three. Measure out 5 units and make a mark. Pull 3 and 5 taut and together until they cross at the 3-5 point and drive a nail in there. Take the ruler and hold it against the nails and mark out a right triangle with a 90 corner. Carefully cut it out with your saw and plane to the line to clean it up and you have a triangle to check your ribs. That is how instruments were made before everyone could afford metal tools. Older makers did tend to lay things out in rounder numbers on purpose, there is a lot of evidence for this in studies made on extant instruments with measurement systems from the periods they were made in. Ratio and proportion are very evident in design theory and practice. However a lot of the mystical ideas about numbers and proportion don't hold up under empirical scrutiny. A lot of the mystical stuff is just baloney. There are however a lot of ratio an proportional standards to be found on the Ur models of guitars. One of the most obvious to make an example is the Spanish concept of the bridge in the time of Torres and after. It was set on 2-3-2 ratio and used a measurement pretty close to a modern standard inch. The bridge has a 2-3-2 proportion and hangs pretty closely to 7" to 7- 1/4" meaning there is 2 in of arm or wing, then 3 in. of saddle mound and another 2 in. of wing. Why was it set? I know why, but I ain't telling. Just yet. And there are several other geometries on the Torres guitar that translate into proportional relationships. Some ar staring makers in the face, but don't perceive them until they begin to reason it out or it's shown to them. This why understanding the conceptual underpinnings of the history of design is important. A lot of ideas inherent in voicing the guitar as understood by the 19th century and early 20th century makers lie in the proportional values and why those designs were arrived at. If we transliterate those groups of measurements and proportional relationships into the metric system we lose track of the original intent. It does not mean a person can't build a fantastic guitar working from a metricated set of plans, but it does mean there is a loss of knowledge as to why the proportional relationships were created and why. There is not only historical and intellectual value in that knowledge, but also practical guitar voicing knowledge. And in the end, it's important to stay in touch with original intent even if you go far afield, there has to be reference point to the past, or eventually the intent will be lost. In the case of violin making a lot of the intent was lost and had to be re-understood via backwards engineering the violin design with the oncia until the mission parts of the Cremonese style of layout were rediscovered. Guitar makers are much closer in history to the Ur sources, so why risk losing the meaning of the original intent? Someone really needs to put together a book of essays by different Spanish guitar authorities that deals with this subject in depth. Romanillos really did a of work, but he missed some key issues and proposed a not so useful square cm of soundboard aggregate, that does not really serve much purpose. But I think a new round of essays on the subject of design and original units of measurement and related topics is long overdue. Were going to lose the concepts that the pre-internet generations learned unless more of it gets recorded. Unfortunately I'm not in position to do more research nor am I an authority with any weight or pull in the business, but I sure recognize the importance.
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