Antikythera Fragment #10 - Ancient Tool Technology - The Workshop

g'day chris here and welcome back to clickspring so at this stage of the project we're well into the process of figuring out what might be called the minimum viable tools required to construct the mechanism not necessarily in their exact form but a reasonable guess at what their minimum set of features would have needed to be to get the job done and there are several more tools and processes still to be covered to give a complete account of what was required but before we continue with the tool technology i'd like to investigate the workshop within which the mechanism was created what would its most basic features have needed to be based on what the device itself demands as minimum requirements as a baseline for this video i've selected the typical mediterranean courtyard-based dwelling of the period for which there's a fair amount of archaeological data to reference this is a useful choice to help illustrate some points within this video but keep in mind there are countless ways all of this could have been implemented and this is just one okay so let's follow the process of making a single component from start to finish to see what workshop capabilities it specifically requires there are many small retaining straps and clips used to hold things together in the machine and this one is going to become one of the three small braces that secure the spirals of the saros dial it's made from prepared sheet stock that was most likely cold worked into shape and these two attributes allow us to make a start on some reasonable speculation regarding the workshop environment to begin with these parts are quite small which makes them hard to see and properly monitor while being hammered into shape so at a minimum we can be sure that the work environment had plenty of natural light now it might seem obvious but stable work surfaces were also a must not just for this sort of hammer and punch work but as we'll see later in this video for the more general work too the process of cold working metal is essentially just hammering a workpiece into shape at ambient temperature so it requires a hammer but also various punches stakes and an anvil to make the required shapes in this case i've made a convex shaped punch that'll start the bend and you can see that it really doesn't take much to get the metal moving in the right direction i've also made a concave shape that can be used to finalize the bend after a few hits and the anvil has similar shapes formed into it to receive the various punch shapes and other parts of the mechanism we've covered enough of the tool technology up to this point of the build to be able to speculate about how each of these particular tools could have been made in antiquity certainly files and maybe some initial forging would do the job but we can even take this back a step further to consider how the raw sheet stock for this component and even the rest of the mechanism was prepared too smelter facilities are known to have been a specialist activity during the period but simple on-site stock preparation and adjustment seems a near certainty given the nature of how the mechanism was constructed the earliest representation we have from antiquity for the necessary forging tools is of a peg-style anvil embedded into the ground while the worker also seated at ground level hammers a work piece into shape now it's probably not the most comfortable way to spend the day at work but it's a simple and precise way to shape metal that in the basics remains essentially unchanged to this day these two cold working processes one at a larger anvil and the other at the bench give us everything required to make all of the cold formed shapes found within the mechanism and it may even give us a bit of an idea of at least some of the sounds of a typical day in the ancient workshop [Music] now of course the cold working of most metals introduces something known as work hardening where the repeated working of the metal makes the material harder and so less capable of further shaping too much of this and the part simply cracks as it's being formed or worse once it's been permanently fitted to the mechanism so it needs to be annealed as part of the forming process the solution is to heat the part until it starts to show colour this anneals the metal making it soft and once again easy to work and so we have the requirement for a convenient heat source capable of generating a dull red heat and given that the metal would generally need to be brought back to ambient temperature quite quickly we also can presume a convenient supply of water now this sort of hearth or brazier requires fairly constant attention and a lot of fuel to keep it going which suggests at the very least safe storage for the bulky resources but aside from the obvious need to pass on the skill set of the craft this also presents a reasonable starting point for making the case for an assistant or perhaps an apprentice now there's not much information about the social structure around this craft at the time but we do know that there are a lot of parts in this device which means a lot of time consuming work if it were to be conducted by only one person and not all of these parts would have necessarily required the attention of the most skilled worker this part for instance is perfect for handing off to an apprentice to complete there could hardly be a better exercise for building skills in handling a file and it has the right blend of cosmetic and dimension requirements to make it a good test of both skill and workmanship it's a self-contained part so blasting through a string of failures has no consequence on the larger build and it's small enough that it won't consume a whole lot of resources if it is continually made poorly although i imagine even the most patient master would probably still have a limit the point though is that there is much in this mechanism that could have been completed by relatively unskilled hands and so it's reasonable to wonder if that might in fact have been the case now cold forming doesn't necessarily give us everything that we need for this part so our hypothetical apprentice is also going to have to get a handle on using the local abrasives in between keeping an eye on the fire a wheel mounted abrasive does seem a logical possibility but we don't see it appear in the historical record until well after the period of the mechanism but as it happens everything that we need can be done with much simpler technology all we need is a hard relatively flat surface for the final preparation of flat stock and a small selection of abrasive stones and powders for the fine detail work [Music] there are many examples of flat surfaces in various structures from the period so i've taken that as given and we also have good examples for various grades of abrasive stones and powders these are some of the natural stones that i use often that can be immediately applied to this job and it's hard to imagine a more primitive workshop tool than these broken and well-used bits of stone yet even today you'd be hard-pressed to find a clock or watchmaker without at least a small selection of abrasive stones just like this in the draw for specific jobs i've briefly mentioned this before but it's become even clearer as the build has progressed that abrasives particularly in combination with water may well be the great untold story of this machine's construction that combination is essentially irreplaceable for achieving the fine tolerance fits required to permit the mechanism to function this point applies to the stones but also to powdered abrasives in this case a medium grade pumice when this abrasive is combined with water to charge a soft leather pad its performance is essentially the same as modern abrasive paper [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] okay so now let's have a look at what these parts were designed to do you might recall where we left off in the previous fragments video describing the scorper and trammel the spirals are essentially loose and of course need to be fixed into position before we can safely proceed with engraving [Music] so the question is how to best hold this easily damaged part so that things don't move about as we're attaching the supports well fortunately the solution has made it all the way through to the 21st century essentially unchanged in the craft of jewellers and engravers low heat source in this case an olive oil fueled lamp and any one of several organic resins suited to the job and if you've ever soldered with natural rosin you'll already know the distinctive pungent smoke generated by these materials so with some basic aspects of the work environment established and the work itself advancing it's tempting to think about what a typical day in the ancient workshop might have looked like with natural light being an obvious limitation it's easy to imagine the workday beginning at dawn with some of the routine shop tasks that still occupy us today perhaps tending to the fire or cleaning up some of the clutter from the previous day's work then planning the next activity and organizing the tools and workspace for this day's main job [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] now it appears from what remains of the mechanism that the dial support straps were placed within tension at 120 degree intervals around each dial although we only have one from each of the saros and metonic dials and neither one is in particularly good condition so not a whole lot can be said with certainty about how much care was taken in that placement but if it were intended to be precise then the dividing plate suggested in a previous video as a means of simplifying the division task would have been quite suitable [Music] and even if used in a relatively informal way with say a simple string guide it would still have provided an excellent result [Music] again giving that 60 division circle yet another opportunity to pay a dividend [Music] [Music] again we see the requirement for at least a modest sized sturdy working surface to not only conduct quite delicate handwork but also to keep an assortment of small hand tools within convenient reach so [Music] [Music] and there is perhaps an aspect of the workshop not strictly indicated in the mechanism but still nevertheless worth considering anyway and that's the likely need for the workshop to have been fairly peaceful and free from distraction this is mostly solitary work and it requires a fair degree of quiet concentration we can't know whether it was the case for our ancient maker but i'd certainly like to think it was so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] and so our little part has taken us on a fun journey through some of the possible sights sounds and even smells of the ancient workshop it's given us a few hints at who needed to be there and why and how they may have worked together much of the activity would likely have been completely familiar to our modern eyes some of it i'm sure would be very pleased to no longer have to deal with some we might be more than a little keen to try our hand at and no doubt there's much more still that we can't even imagine but at the center of it is the unchanging reality of working metal into precise shapes joining it with purpose and design with other pieces and then finishing it all to a required standard and it's this common connection between that world and our own that makes searching for the answers to how this machine was constructed so interesting and worth pursuing as i move forward with the rest of the build thanks for watching i'll see you later [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Clickspring

Views: 370,853

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Id: BLBDKmFG90U

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021