[HN Gopher] Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the...
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Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame
Author : berkeleyjunk
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-06-02 15:44 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popsci.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popsci.com)
| cirrus3 wrote:
| There is a great episode of NOVA about it:
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/rebuilding-notre-dame/
| ars wrote:
| > it's ethically and artistically far more imperative to stay
| true
|
| I could maybe understand artistically if the end result looks
| different. But ethically? It's a building, ethics don't apply to
| it.
| barney54 wrote:
| I didn't realize that using power tools was unethical.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| Whatever happened to the many hundreds of millions French
| billionaires said they would donate for it? I know a couple have
| coughed up, and most of the companies who said they would have
| but I don't all who promised to do so have.
| dnissley wrote:
| Nothing here suggests they're running short on funds
| falcolas wrote:
| I've seen some videos on TikTok by stonemasons who are re-
| building the decorative shapes in chunks of marble; it's very
| cool to watch and see them doing it.
|
| It's probably not even remotely economic or "productive", but
| sometimes that's OK.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Funny, how the knowledge about cathedral building was rather
| well preserved. After all, all cathedrals still standing have a
| cadrebof employed masons and other artisans to maintain and
| renovate them. The actual building is dofferent, I assume an
| lot of that will be rediscovered during the Notre Dam
| restauration.
| falcolas wrote:
| It's my belief that the underpinning design principles have
| not been lost - cathedrals are quite well studied by
| architects as I understand it.
|
| So, while some of the specifics are probably having to be
| identified and re-implemented, the basics are broadly
| understood. Stonemasons as a mass-employer has gone away, but
| like blacksmithing there are still individuals out there who
| carry on the tradition.
| jfengel wrote:
| The whole building isn't economic or productive. They could
| probably make more money tearing it down and replacing it with
| a Starbucks.
|
| The vast majority of human activity isn't productive. And
| that's awesome. We've got so much wealth that we can afford to
| use it on things that are merely pretty or interesting, like
| video games and space telescopes and flowers.
|
| It would be nice if we could use more of it to ensure that
| people have the basics, but that's rarely about lack of money.
| It's nearly always due to some more systemic problem that can't
| be fought just by throwing money at it.
| barelyauser wrote:
| >but that's rarely about lack of money
|
| Yes, it is the lack of action. People are selfish. End of
| story. We have the tech and knowledge to fix it all, but
| burning a ton of kerosene to travel to the other side of the
| world for 2 a weeks vacation is more desirable.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The whole building isn't economic or productive. They could
| probably make more money tearing it down and replacing it
| with a Starbucks.
|
| It likely has economic _impact_ vastly larger than any
| Starbucks via tourism.
| barelyauser wrote:
| And what does "economic impact" means? A bunch of people
| burning jet fuel to get there and spend some hours looking
| at it? Why not working towards helping other people?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Buying from the cafes nearby. Patronizing the hotels.
| Going to see a show after. All the things one does in the
| neighborhood around a tourist attraction.
|
| A week-long golf tournament in my town brings in 200k+
| people and local government touts a $190M economic impact
| number for that. I'm sure it's fudged to be as high as
| possible, but pretending Notre Dame doesn't have an
| economic benefit to Paris would be odd.
| barelyauser wrote:
| Money means nothing. Human time is what matters. Consider
| that back at their place of origin things did not get
| done. Economic impact means nothing. If I gave you $100
| to watch me do nothing, what value this transaction
| created? There is virtually nothing to show for at the
| end but we created $100 of economic impact...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If I gave you $100 to watch me do nothing, what value
| this transaction created?
|
| That seems entirely up to you.
| seszett wrote:
| Not all tourists in Paris comme from far away, probably a
| majority of tourists came by train or car. I never take a
| plane to visit Paris.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I have always been disgusted by this sort of low,
| mediocre, pseudo-moral argument. "Why build these grand
| churches? You could feed people with that money!" "Why
| put all this effort into beautiful buildings? You could
| build more low-income housing for the same cash!" It
| sickens me.
|
| We can do both. Man does not live by bread alone.
| Utilitarian mediocrity is satisfied with a full stomach
| and keeping warm.
| jfengel wrote:
| Admission was free to the cathedral itself, though you
| needed to pay to visit the roof.
|
| Of course it was a draw to Paris in general. It's hard to
| measure its impact, since the cathedral fire coincides with
| COVID, but Paris tourism has nearly reached pre-pandemic
| levels and remains the most-visited city in the world.
|
| I don't honestly believe it would be a net economic benefit
| to put a Starbucks there. But more to the point, the whole
| thing is there just because people like to look at it.
| That's all the "productivity" it needs.
| franky47 wrote:
| There are many solutions in old hand-tool woodworking that were
| elegant back then, and are still more relevant today than
| spinning a tool at 20k RPM.
|
| Example: when removing waste with a chisel for joinery, going
| cross-grain allows popping large chunks with ease, rather than
| route them to dust. And it's a lot of fun!
|
| Power tools do have a use for repeatability and mass-production,
| which may be useful in the Notre Dame build, but I find the
| carpenters' approach more honorable.
| samtho wrote:
| As a woodworker, I get what your saying but calling the
| approach of using older methods as "more honorable" kind of
| rubs me the wrong way. It's not like the original builders had
| a choice of what to use, I would bet they would choose the
| modern stuff if you could somehow loan them the technology from
| the future. Using modern tools is not antithetical to
| craftsmanship, it's about the care, attention to detail,
| designs choices, using appropriate materials/fasteners, etc.
| Not saying they have to change the look at all, but they can
| make good and faithful reproductions with modern tools that
| capture the essence of what was lost.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Cheap and quick has been the carpenter's mantra since the
| dawn of time. One look at the inside of an old piece of
| furniture shows how little effort went into things that
| weren't readily seen.
|
| Mortise and tenon joints are fast and easy (read: cheap and
| quick) to make with a chisel and hammer. You can bet
| carpenters of old would be using nails and screws to build
| all kinds of things, if they were as cheap and abundant as
| they are now.
| hwc wrote:
| they should have built the roof with steel & glass so it can't
| burn!
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| But it would have been ugly.
| klyrs wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Don't forget the controversial but spectacular Christ (nee
| Crystal) Cathedral in Orange County:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Cathedral_(Garden_Grove...
|
| Which was a Televangelical showpiece until it was purchased and
| renovated by the Roman Catholic diocese. Everything old is new
| again!
| bambax wrote:
| The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding the
| fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why the fire
| wasn't stopped in time.
|
| As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) --
| but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on
| the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some
| of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used,
| etc.
|
| And to monitor all this activity, there was only one guy, who had
| started on the job a couple of weeks earlier, who had received
| little to no training, and who didn't even know where the alarm
| was.
|
| The point was to "save on costs", that is, in order to save maybe
| 1,300 euros / month over three months, the people in charge
| caused 1 billion euros of damage and lost irreparable historical
| artefacts.
|
| There is a whole administrative department in France, whose sole
| responsibility is to make sure this kind of catastrophe never
| happens. At the very least, people should have been fired, from
| the site manager to the culture minister. Yet nobody's being
| investigated, let alone prosecuted or punished. Incredible.
| soco wrote:
| "Save the costs" is the official religion of the MBA era we
| live in and no sacrifice is too big. Am I sarcastic? I can't
| tell.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Yep, to the modern administrative class "don't shit where you
| eat" is laughably old fashioned. Modernity brings a new
| contest: who can shit where they eat the most for the
| longest? Last one to get cholera wins! And don't worry about
| the actual cholera infection, that's what taxpayer bailouts
| are for!
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "where you eat" is too vague to be actionable policy the
| real profit is in boundary pushing. Just how close _can_
| you get the shit to the food? In this century we will find
| out.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Its a waste of money you could actually help people instead.
| When Victor Hugo published his novel The Hunchback of Notre
| Dame in 1831 nobody cared about Notre Dame. Anything of value
| had been stolen during the French Revolution and the
| Cathedral was in terrible repair.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| [flagged]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding
| the fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why
| the fire wasn't stopped in time.
|
| Is this a true statement? I remember reading an extremely
| detailed play-by-play in one of the major papers a couple years
| ago that did a pretty good analysis of why a confluence of
| factors led to the fire. I don't know what the status is of any
| governmental, official investigation, but I at least saw some
| thorough investigative reporting from news organizations.
|
| I agree with the sibling comment that this feels a little like
| scapegoating. Like many disasters like this, it wasn't just one
| thing, but a confluence of lots of little innocuous things
| (e.g. new guy on the job, can't remember all the details but
| maybe there was a phone number change IIRC, etc.) that led to
| the fire. Not saying a thorough investigation isn't warranted,
| but pretending these types of things are completely preventable
| is also a mistake IMO.
|
| Edit: This is from a _US_ government website, and I can 't see
| all the details but it looks like someone did do a root cause
| analysis, https://www.govevents.com/details/37273/risk-
| management-case... : In the days following
| the fire, questions began to arise about what could have caused
| the fire and, also about the nature and extent of the fire
| detection and protection systems. It turns out Notre Dame had
| one of the most sophisticated and elaborate fire safety systems
| ever designed, befitting a landmark of its stature. A team of
| experts had spent more than six years and untold funds
| developing the fire protection plan. Yet, when the system was
| put to a real test, it failed in spectacular fashion. How this
| could have happened, and what lessons can be learned from this
| tragic event with be discussed in detail.
| bambax wrote:
| There was an inquiry about the direct causes of the fire,
| that concluded the initial "spark", so to speak, was indeed
| an accident. I agree with that.
|
| > _Is this a true statement?_
|
| Yes, I think it is, unless one can point to an inquiry, not
| about the fire itself, and how it started (which has been
| done), but about the chain of responsibilities of the people
| in charge of the construction site at the time of the fire.
|
| My point is, having just one guy with no training and no
| experience, monitor a landmark of this importance, during
| major works on the roof, is incredibly careless and
| unprofessional and should have consequences. But apparently
| it doesn't.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Intact historical buildings and artifacts are rare, because
| something like this is the expected outcome. People are
| careless and incompetent, except by accident.
|
| Restoring a major historical building is always a one-off
| project. You follow the best practices, and the chance of a
| catastrophic outcome may be 10%, 1%, or 0.1%. You can't tell
| those scenarios apart in advance, because they all look very
| similar. Success is overwhelmingly likely. If a catastrophe
| occurs, the reason is often obvious in retrospect, and you will
| take that into account in the next project. But it clearly
| wasn't obvious in advance.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Why is there a tendency for scapegoating necessary in these
| situations? It seems like a western cultural carnal temptation
| for personal justice porn
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Something bad occurred. Let's figure out what, why, and how,
| and make any necessary changes to make future occurrences of
| bad thing less likely.
|
| I don't see how that is scapegoating.
| chrstphrknwtn wrote:
| > some of them possibly smoking
|
| I lived in Paris for a time, I would say it is guaranteed some
| were smoking.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| > _As far as we know, the fire was an accident_
|
| "As far as we know"
|
| In the same sense of like "innocent until proven guilty"
|
| But is that the right lens to be looking through here?
|
| What is the rate of accidental church fires, let alone at
| somewhere that is such a treasured location as this?
|
| Then factor in, wasn't there an ongoing spate of what were
| clearly church arson attacks going on at the time?
|
| Then factor in what you were describing of what seems to be an
| inexplicably lackadaisical approach of getting to the bottom of
| what occurred, giving the impression of some wanting above all
| else to divert attention from what one would think to be the
| most pertinent questions about what occurred.
|
| Then do the calculus of, okay, if it could be shown to be a
| clear cut case of being accidental why wouldn't people in a
| position to do so, show that? That would have minimal, if any,
| political ramifications. Whereas the political ramifications of
| other possible causes of the fire would be much higher.
|
| It raises some questions doesn't it?
|
| Why aren't people in positions of influence on this matter and
| in political leadership doing what their office calls on them
| to do?
|
| And given what can be observed of their actions what is one to
| make of their intentions?
|
| Why aren't they safe guarding and defending the nation's
| culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and
| vulnerable to attack?
| krisoft wrote:
| > if it could be shown to be a clear cut case of being
| accidental why wouldn't people in a position to do so, show
| that?
|
| How would that even look like? The conclusion that it is most
| likely an accidental fire was not reached by finding
| something in particular, but by not finding evidence
| indicating a criminal motive.
|
| > It raises some questions doesn't it?
|
| You are are certainly raising a lot of questions. If you
| think something why don't you spell it out?
|
| > Why aren't they safe guarding and defending the nation's
| culture and heritage? Why are they leaving it open and
| vulnerable to attack?
|
| Why are you talking about an attack? Who attacked the church
| in your opinion and how?
|
| What in particular would you like to be done by whom?
| [deleted]
| hef19898 wrote:
| So, your line thinking goes:
|
| It can have been an accident, or not. If not, well there were
| a lot of arsons happening at the same , maybe, so it most
| likely was arson. Not calling it arson is clearly political.
| And that means it was arson, because people in power and the
| establishment cannot be trustesd. It also means the arson was
| caused by politians, and those people in power not protecting
| us. Because they fail to do their job
|
| You are aware that the moment the fire actually was an
| accident, the other 90% of your comment are pretty close to a
| conspiracy theory?
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > What is the rate of accidental church fires, let alone at
| somewhere that is such a treasured location as this?
|
| https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v2i7-508.
| ..
|
| 1,300/year in the US, 25% of which are arson. Clearly it's
| not a unique occurrence.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Are you saying "clearly not a unique occurrence" in regard
| to accidental, or arson?
|
| I'm surprised at the 25% arson rate, that is considerably
| higher than I would have guessed, and when combined with
| the strange response as OP was pointing out, and the fact
| that there's not a large subset of "No cause determined,"
| it would seem to tip the scale pretty strongly to arson
| being the most probable cause in this case.
| brianwawok wrote:
| A lot of people are angry at churches. Mostly with good
| reason. So they tend to get the torch a lot more than
| your average business.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Hating God, is hating the world, is hating yourself. No
| good reason for that.
|
| If another earthly mortal connected to a church has done
| something you take issue with, take it up with that
| person, don't damage or destroy a community's property,
| heritage, and connection to the transcendent.
|
| _people here srsly advocating /justifying criminal,
| potentially homicidal activity, smh_
| andrepd wrote:
| 1. How is "hating god" hating the world and yourself
| (lol), and 2. who tf is advocating for criminal activity
| here? You clearly have an axe to grind, so perhaps take
| it somewhere else.
| jlawson wrote:
| I'm reminded how literally within an hour of the fire
| breaking out, the news was telling us all _very clearly_ that
| it was an accident - a fact that they clearly could not
| possibly have known at that time given the flames were still
| rising and no investigation could possibly have been done.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not every lazy reporting is hiding a large conspiracy.
| Sometimes it is just the lazy picking of the most likely
| cause to get cotent out.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Can you point to a source that shows that news was
| reporting that it was an accident within hours, and not
| stating that there is no appearance of foul play/terrorism.
|
| "This doesn't appear to be a terrorist attack" is a normal
| thing to say in a city and country where terrorist attacks
| are somewhat common.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| The rate of construction accidents is what you should look
| at, not church fires.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Ok but the fact of there being some construction going on
| is somewhat ancillary to the whole point being made of the
| various factors observed and at play here that come
| together and raise some questions. I could have easily left
| the "what is the rate" part out, and the points made would
| have been just as strong or stronger.
|
| And yes there was some sort of maintenance/construction
| going on, and if that played a role in the fire one would
| think at some point in the intervening years between then
| and now someone would have shown how it played a role.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-
| Dame_fire#Investigation
|
| Workers were smoking in a space where it was explicitly
| not permitted, and renovation work meant there was
| electrical supply where "normally, no electrical is
| allowed in the roof space because of the extreme fire
| risk".
|
| Pinpointing the _exact_ source of ignition is a bit
| challenging given the fire and collapse, I suspect, but
| without any evidence pointing _towards_ arson it seems
| like a pretty reasonable conclusion.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Were they smoking there in the moments immediately
| preceding the fire, and a dropped cigarette and maybe
| some sawdust or something somehow ignited a 35cm or
| whatever wide beam? And the smokers didn't notice? But I
| think the answer is there weren't any construction
| workers around in the time before the fire to be smoking
| anyway.
|
| "Maybe it was an electrical thing or something" is far
| from conclusive evidence, and as OP was saying,
| completely incredible as a response to an event of this
| magnitude that attracted worldwide attention.
|
| > _pinpointing_
|
| I'm always surprised when I hear what fire forensics can
| figure out given the state of the evidence being worked
| with.
|
| > _any evidence pointing toward arson_
|
| The whole point of my original post was that _all_ the
| circumstantial evidence points toward arson.
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| >and a dropped cigarette and maybe some sawdust or
| something somehow ignited a 35cm or whatever wide beam?
| And the smokers didn't notice?
|
| You clearly don't know how fire works and just how
| quickly it spreads. You also vastly underestimate how
| flammable the roof material was.
|
| >all the circumstantial evidence points toward arson
|
| Pray tell them, instead of slinging vague provocations.
| Better yet, if you have such clear evidence, I'm sure
| you're gonna go to the police or the papers with it,
| right?
| krisoft wrote:
| > The whole point of my original post was that all the
| circumstantial evidence points toward arson.
|
| What evidence are you talking about?
| andrepd wrote:
| The evidence that he is Catholic and there is a war on
| the West and therefore some foreign migrant construction
| worker did it on purpose as an attack on christian
| cultural heritage.
|
| Duh.
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't think it is cool to put words into other people's
| mouth. I'm sure canoebuilder can speak for themselves.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It has burnt down and been rebuilt many times in it's history.
|
| Just like we are rebuilding with original stones and
| techniques, one should perhaps argue that it should also be
| rebuilt with its original fire resilience too - ie. Low.
|
| At this point, a fire once every hundred years or so is part of
| the culture, and to stop doing that is in a way destroying the
| character of the cathedral.
| red75prime wrote:
| I can't say whether it's sarcasm or not.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Perhaps it's somewhat pragmatic. Churches are built to last
| by the standards of the era, and they're funded by
| generational resources by people who want to make a legacy,
| but churches are still victims of disaster at the ordinary
| rate. Earthquakes seem to claim significant victims even to
| the present day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-
| Cathedral_of_St._Mary
|
| The Christian view of fire is, of course, multi-faceted, as
| the Holy Spirit is a force for renewal, rebirth and
| purification. No parishioner wants their home burned down,
| of course, but at the end of the day, those are simply
| buildings, and they're replaceable, and every demolition is
| an opportunity to remake something new and wonderful.
| soco wrote:
| They also rely on medieval era trees to reconstruct it, as the
| more than 1000 oak trees painstakingly sought through entire
| France had to be more than 1 m wide. Okay not medieval - they are
| only about 200 years old. Could have made a nice title though.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Between 200 and 400 years old, yes, exactly ! Most of those
| trees are older than the United States :)
| shagie wrote:
| There's the story by the Long Now foundation about the oak
| beams at the New College in Oxford
| https://longnow.org/ideas/humans-and-trees-in-long-term-part...
| /// https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-
| ox... ///
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2013/oct/02/david-...
|
| Another example (and less debatable in its authenticity) Why
| the US Navy Manages Its Own Private Forest -
| https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-manages-its-own...
| /// https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2015/05/11/the-wooden-
| wall... (and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28793461 )
| kryptiskt wrote:
| In the 1950s, Lund Cathedral bought the quarries where the
| stone for it originally came 900 years ago, so they know they
| have a source of the right stone for renovations.
| mcdonje wrote:
| That's really sad. What a shame cutting down 1k large old oaks
| for any building at all. It's not necessary these days. Of
| course they need some wood in publicly viewable areas, but this
| amount of not only wood but large old oak trees is excessive
| and concerning.
|
| Is there any indication that they're improving the structure so
| it will be more fire proof? Or are they simply restoring it to
| the configuration that already failed?
| tokai wrote:
| Oak don't grow straight naturally, so all most all tall 1
| meter thick oak trees were planted and are crops. If you
| don't cut some down now and replant there will be no tall 1
| mete wide oak trees in 200 years time. Most European forests
| are cultural landscapes that are actively harvested and
| renewed.
| hackernewds wrote:
| The cutting down of 1000 year oaks is sad. Perhaps we can
| have the perspective that these trees lived fulfilling lives
| and the younger trees deserve centuries?
|
| And after all the Notre Dame is also a very historically
| significant building
| malartic wrote:
| > Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that
| already failed?
|
| 780 years is not that bad for a building. (or, more
| precisely, the roof frame)
|
| Macron & co had some idea for new things. They were all
| horrible. While I do think with good taste one could do some
| new things nicely ( e.g maybe a titanium-based roof instead
| of the lead one ), a restoration is the next best choice when
| proposed new things are crazy ugly/out-of-touch.
|
| Btw, in our age, and since at least the early middle-age in
| France and old Europe, the use of old, large trees is the
| main political reason to keep alive some old, large forest
| with old trees. For ordinary wood they do plantations of
| fast-growing stuff and cut at maybe 40y or so.
| mcdonje wrote:
| The only electrical fire vector they needed to worry about
| 780 years ago was lightning storms.
|
| I'm not proposing ugly or out of touch changes. Materials
| changes like titanium instead of lead are exactly the sort
| of thing I'm talking about. Not all of the oak will be in
| publicly viewable areas.
|
| I'm surprised and disappointed you don't keep forests
| around simply to benefit nature and humanity without
| needing a pretext of building construction.
| kelsolaar wrote:
| The cathedral has been up for hundreds of years, hard to
| qualify that as a failure.
| mcdonje wrote:
| Not exactly in its most recent configuration that failed.
|
| The people in charge are so concerned about historical
| accuracy they need to cut down a thousand large oaks, but
| their predecessors weren't so concerned about historical
| accuracy when they retrofitted a medieval structure with
| the electrical wiring that ended up causing it to burn
| down.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Lucky for Notre Dame, HN is not charge of
| reconstruction...
| franky47 wrote:
| We have a forest in the center of France that was dedicated to
| producing ship masts. Surely some of those oak trees may have
| fit the bill.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Tron%C3%A7ais
| Animats wrote:
| They're using ordinary power tools, such as bandsaws and sanders.
| There's some hand tool work on the connections between beams. It
| looks like cabinetmaking carpentry on a larger scale, with lots
| of chiseled joints.[1]
|
| The real hand work is on artistic stonework. That really is being
| done by hand. Omni CNC's proposals to make replacement parts with
| their stone-cutting computer controlled milling machines were
| turned down.[2]
|
| [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/travel/notre-dame-
| restoratio...
|
| [2] https://www.omni-cnc.com/how-cnc-stone-cutting-machine-
| help-...
| shirleyquirk wrote:
| I came here to share that the importance of using contemporaneous
| materials, if not methods, was highlighted for me when I worked
| on Bath cathedral and saw how the victorian 'improvements' of
| using iron rather than wood to fix the stonework caused much
| damage a century later; iron expands when it rusts and causes
| cracking.
|
| Then I see linked in that article that Notre Dame was a very
| early example of using iron staples! I can only think that they
| were used away from water, unlike Bath, where the repairs were on
| the window fixings.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > iron expands when it rusts and causes cracking.
|
| This is often a contributing factor in the failure of modern
| steel-reinforced concrete structures.
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