That art versus craft thing again

**Gavin Baird** · Apr-20-2007, 10:33am

The CNC art verus craft thing went by a while ago and was tempted to jump in but decided it was best not to. That was until I received a shippment from David Nichols of CP inlay. I have talked to him many times and all his work is done by hand. This latest shippment as shown in the attached image was started at 8:00 AM and shipped the same afternoon. I don’t think that the CNC thing could top that...could be wrong.
The point I am trying to make is that if the art/craft thing is not pursued the process will be lost.I think I would sooner have the saw cut of the human rather than the fluted line of a CNC cutter. Just a bit more personal in my opinion.
As a closing note, my wife an I purchased a Sterling Silver cup for our latest grandson and had it ingrave with his name and date of birth..Guess what, when it arrived the engraving was machine done and looked like hell. We asked the jeweler who informed us that ther were no engravers any more, at least in thi part of the world...Sad but true.....Gavin

**Gibson A5** · Apr-20-2007, 11:05am

David must cut with both hands at the same time! Nice work.
Bill P.

**MikeEdgerton** · Apr-20-2007, 11:11am

Actually the engraving art is alive and well, it may not be cheap and that is probably what drove your jewler. Take a look at Sam Alfano's webpage. The last time I looked the majority of his students were jewlers.

**Bill James** · Apr-20-2007, 11:30am

"We asked the jeweler who informed us that ther were no engravers any more, at least in thi part of the world...Sad but true.....Gavin"

Gavin,
Me thinks he was trying to appease you. There are many, many hand engravers out there. I work with at least a half dozen or so, all very talented and these I've just happened on, never even went looking.

As you can see, the art is far from lost, this is all hand work.

**Bill James** · Apr-20-2007, 11:31am

...

**ShaneJ** · Apr-20-2007, 12:27pm

Otto Carter is an engraver here in Abilene, Texas. I've not met him, but I've heard good things about him, and his work looks very nice.

**Dale Ludewig** · Apr-20-2007, 1:07pm

Bill, that is just beautiful. I'm sure also that the hand engraving work is not dead and gone. I certainly hope not. I make my own pitiful attempts at it on MOP. I've said this all along: I think there's a place for both machine and hand, and not just with engraving but with almost everything, and there's a heck of a lot of overlap where either could work. On the other hand, I don't think a machine could carve the "David" and invoke such emotion when you saw it as the real one. I also don't think I want to have people hand filing the tops of my cylinder heads for my truck engine.

**ErikAitch** · Apr-20-2007, 1:45pm

I hate to say it... but the inlays in the OP, especially the flowers, look like ####; the draftsmanship is rough, and the saw work looks like it was done in a hurry. If I was forced to use those, it would take me days to correct what should have been done right in the first place.

The engravings shown illustrate a standard for handwork that I wish I could achieve. Those inlays aren't even close. Good handwork takes time, just like good machine work. If it's started with a lousy drawing and finished impatiently, it doesn't matter what tools were used.

There are people who can hand scrape an engine block as flat or flatter than most machines. It used to be a common practice to make two cubes so accurately flat that air pressure alone would keep them so tightly together that they had to be hammered apart.

Sorry... I'm just little cranky today.

**amowry** · Apr-20-2007, 2:25pm

The inlays look pretty good to me. They're certainly a different style than the engraving (and "traditional" mandolin inlays), but I don't see why you think the draftsmanship is rough. They're difficult to see in that photo, but I've seen other work by Dave Nichols, and I'd say he's one of the best there is.

**JEStanek** · Apr-20-2007, 2:54pm

Erik, you would be suprized how much better a higher resolution un-shrunk photo of those inlays look. #The photo above is at 72 DPI which is pretty crummy for a real representation. #

Gavin's instruments have some of the finest/prettiest looking headstock inlays I've seen. See the headstock photo (better resolution) in this thread.

Jamie

**Brad H** · Apr-21-2007, 10:13am

I have to chime in... I've commisioned Mr. Nichols for custom inlay in the past, and I'll have to say his work is fantastic, no matter how fast he cuts. Our conversation about inlay alone increased the quality of my inlay 100%.
I've also been programing my little ShopBot CNC to cut mandolin parts and I have to say that the knowledge of whatever encompasses cutting or engraving accurate parts or whatever, is its own craft. There's alot to think about to get quality, whether doing something by hand or telling a machine to do it for you. Attention to detail is attention to detail and I think it's really all about the kind of person doing the work. If they want it done right it's going to take time. I probably could have built 3 mandolins in the time I've spent trying to set up the machine, learn about the software and acutally draw the part, and cut the few parts I currently do on it. The big disadvantage of CNC in my humble experience, is once you get it, you THINK you've got it. Hand work alows you to repeat a task while doing it slightly different each time whether you want it the same or not, and that creates an artistic advantage to manifesting that task. It's evident when you look at Mr. Baird's inlays, they are different in the smallest ways and that's what people like about handwork. You get to learn more about the artistic values when doing it by hand, and probably respect it more for its uniqueness. On the flipside, if you're into machining, and someone pulls a part out of the CNC that they've just cut, and the finish is awesome and fits whatever it's designated for, and the dimentions are executed properly, then that deserves respect too. And it takes a lot of knowledge and inginuity to pull that off when machining. And when you KNOW you've got it right, you can repeat it exactly. I think neither hand work or CNC should be underestimated or catagorized, it all comes down to the quality of the finished part. Hand work or machined... it is what it is.

**Rick Turner** · Apr-21-2007, 10:54am

In what year did Gibson start machine rough-carving tops and backs? I would guess that it was earlier than many might think.

**Chris Baird** · Apr-21-2007, 11:02am

The Loars where all rough carved by machine.

**Rick Turner** · Apr-21-2007, 4:28pm

Precisely...

There is no reason why machines and hand work cannot be combined to achieve superior results. Art and craft, machine and hand...these are not mutually exclusive concepts.

**Keith Newell** · Apr-22-2007, 1:18am

Does anyone have a link to Cp inlay if they have a website? Or is it all over the phone? Nice stuff.
For the record I make my living programming CNC equipment all the way up to 9 axis stuff. I now have a 3 axis router and find I use it way LESS then I thought. I will rough out a top, back or neck but there is a ton of work after that to get it to correct thickness and size. The advantage is that since I am a part time builder I need to maximize my time so if the "beast" can rough out something while I work on another instrument then it's a good thing.
I feel that it saves time but then again I SPENT the time learning to program, setup, maintain and how to approuch a project over many years. I built 20+ insturments without a CNC and find that it helps me not to make them quicker but to spend more time on the finer aspects of building and improve my quality.
Keith Newell #
http://www.newellmandolin.com