Technology and Crafts

I hereby rename you, CheeseRat.

I also didn't watch, but I believe I have watched a similar video. My guess is that thing is a lampshade made from a tree trunk. I have watched the process, but that is by far the largest I've seen if that is indeed what I'm seeing.

Otherwise, I blame the alcohol.

People not normally involved in production technology often find CNC machining fascinating, so here ya go.

Why a ball bearing you might ask? Well, it's how these blacksmith types get hold of premium steel. Lol
I'm not underwriting his hardening process though, but it works for him.

 Of course it was.
There's the craft. There's technology.  

A long video, but parts of it are quite interesting.
And you gotta love engines that are engineered and built to run for 35? 55? 70? years. 

The way he ends this process is not optimal. He kinda lowers the amount and quality of the iron. However: He does this with wooden tools only, which is the limitation.

For a while I wasn't sure whether to post this in Arts & Crafts or Technology and Crafts. In the end I decided it was a technology.

Colors, as paints and dyes, have always been problems for humanity. Rare, precious, fugitive, and not particular brilliant, is much of the story all the way up to our own times. Really, until just a couple of decades ago.

Blue has been a particular problem. You've probably heard stories of gem stones being ground up for making a blue pigment that was many times more expensive than gold. Well, not even that. The successful method to extract the blue natural Ultramarine (an extremely complex Sodium-Calcium-Sulfur-Aluminum-Silicate mineral) from Lapis Lazuli aka Lazurite was only invented rather late. But yes, that is what the stories refer to, but Lapis Lazuli was used as a pigment for only a relative short historic time in medieval arts. Lapis Lazuli itself was however used for its blue color in inlays, mosaics, etc for many thousands of years. But if you crush Lapis Lazuli, mill and wash it, you only end up with a grey pigment with a slight blue hue. Making the clean blue pigment requires a secret separation process involving a resin. And that was invented rather late, so earlier blue pigments had to be something different.

Azurite, a blue copper mineral, was used somewhat by Egyptians and Romans, but was rare, expensive in antique times, and not durable. It would turn dark and green, exposed to light and air. It got cheaper later, in medieval Europe, and held up better in oil painting, but still turned green and dark, but did see some use.

Crushed and milled Turquoise gem stones was used as a pigment in the Orient, but has rather lackluster color and strength.

The Egyptians invented 'Egyptian Blue', the worlds first synthetic pigment. The Romans did learn the process. But very soon after, the knowledge of how to make Egyptian Blue was lost, and was completely lost for a couple of thousand years, only rediscovered a few years ago.

People learned to make blue glass however. So why not make blue glass, crush it and mill it to a blue pigment? This is 'Smalt'. While it was produced and used, it had its own set of problems. The finer you ground it, the more color it lost. So to use it, you had to use it very coarse, more like sand than pigment. And it wasn't durable. The blue glass was permanent, but once you crushed it something started to happen in the glass that made it lose its color over time.

That all about the woes for artists and painters, but surely people had some other blue color?
Yes. This, Indigo, a plant color. The coloring substance exists in several different plants over the world. In Europe the plant was Woad. Among all the videos of charming, nerdy, but messy and incompetent new wave vegan ladies trying to dye wool with plants, I also found this rustic Finnish lady who actually knows what she's doing. Typical use for Indigo was dying textiles, but they also made pigments for paint.
Indigo is however not a brilliant blue. It's rather greyish. (The video colors give a slightly wrong impression). It's also not particularly lightfast. It fades. But it was the only blue people had.

So, throughout human history, in terms of colors and paints, 'Blue' was the big problem, all the way up until the early 1700's, when the problem was suddenly solved. The invention of 'Prussian Blue'.
(Prussian blue leans towards cyan - or you could say it's a "cold" blue -. A century later, synthetic 'Ultramarine' was invented. This leans towards violet - or is a "warm" blue -. Between these two blues, both permanent and cheap, as well as strong, you can mix all blue hues. So not only was the big problem solved, but it was solved pretty perfectly. It became the most solved color problem.

And when it rains, it pours. Soon after, a string of other 'perfect' blue pigments got invented: Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue, Phthalo Blue, Manganese Blue, Bonnard Blue, Indanthrene Blue, Cobalt Turquoise. And the avalanche continues today: Zirconium Vanadium Blue, YinMn Blue, Cobalt Deep Blue, and recently Egyptian Blue, Maya Blue and Han Blue have been reinvented. Maya Blue and Han Blue are not permanent, but the others are. The only one that is cheap is Phthalo Blue however, so that is what dominates everything today. The more modern color problem then became Reds, but that is another story.)

Prussian Blue:









Oh, and that guy in the last video can make 'Prussian Blue'. He's a chemist. But he can't make paint, so you can ignore the end of that video. He has no clue.

Prussian Blue also has some other uses. It was used to make "Blueprint" copies of drawings, in the age before computers, printers and photocopiers. It's a medicine, a therapy against some kinds of poisoning, and it's used in engineering by skilled specialists to hand shape or hand fit parts of machinery.