Craftsmanship in Wood

I found the discussion of Chinese Wheelbarrows on the Low-Tech Magazine's site quite interesting, and thought I'd post up a picture of one wheelbarrow - see the sawhorse built in?
It would be an interesting device to make- here's a plan view of the curved frame parts:
Here's a link to the magazine's page on the wheelbarrows:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/ ... agazine%29

Interesting! After reading that article a week ago I started thinking to make one and developed some ideas and sketches of how my version should look like. I thought they are just beautiful devices.

Brilliant in it's simplicity - clever design beating technology every time.

Looks like I'm going to lose a couple of hours checking out that Low-tech magazine.

Cheers

Derek

It's a weird world. I was drooling over Chinese wheelbarrows just a few weeks back and then this morning received an inquiry from an artist's representative in New York City who wants one or more traditional Chinese wheelbarrows for a sculpture installation! I just got off the phone with the rep and it is sounding most promising. Wow. Building a Chinese traditional wheelbarrow, or two- how cool would that be?!

I'll be heading down to the Big apple on the weekend of the 17th, and will be meeting the artist then. We'll see what happens.

This is looking better all the time - I have set up a meeting on Thursday this coming week with the artist, who's quite famous, and they are paying all my travel expenses to boot.

I've been researching Chinese wheelbarrows quite a bit - here are a few favorite images:
It's very common to see these wheelbarrows as taxis, and there were military versions in the Ming period which had rocket launchers built on top!

Ok, then my vote is for the one with rocket launchers on it... (guessing laser beams wouldn't be period correct...)

Well, since you voted...
I guess they used to line them up for the full barrage effect:

Here's a model someone made of the rocket launching wheelbarrow:
Not sure I find the model's design too inspiring from a structural perspective...

I'm off to NYC tomorrow morning and won't be back until Sunday night. My email access might be erratic at best, so I may not be able to respond to new posts in as timely amanner as I would like. Don't let that stop you from commenting though! I'll catch up with y'all next week.

Hmmmm... and it's quite blocky as well, doesn't have the pleasing curves of the first photo in this thread. OK, I'll give up my wish that the client will want one with rocket launchers

Best of luck with the meeting Chris.

Derek

Meeting happened, and went well. I've had to sign a non-disclosure agreement so I won't be blogging about the project or providing any more details about its nature or scope. It's nice to have a project ahead.