Micro-engraver who works between heartbeats to keep his hand steady | Hacker News Reader

Micro-engraver who works between heartbeats to keep his hand steady

qz.com

131 pointsmhb38 comments

Wait... this guy actually engraved Leonardo's "The Last Supper" along the edge of a razor.

At first I was hoping that, being a non-native speaker, I misunderstood something. But no, it's really the cutting edge we're talking about here.

This is crazy. I mean, the fact that you need a microscope to look at this kind of art makes it seem more of an exercise in style than anything else, but it's still awesome that someone is able to carve the freakin' edge of a razor.

This isn't style, this is actual master-craftsmanship, the marriage of expert technique with absolute dedication to the craft.

I think it's hard to recognize in this day and age because the quality of so many mass-produced items is acceptable at best and often quite terrible.

Absolutely! I didn't mean to be disrespectful, I actually think this is beyond awesome. I greatly admire an individual capable of perfecting his craft enough to be able to carve a famous painting on the cutting edge of a razor, as I admire any craftsman building fine things.

It's kind of sad that he has to take medications to slow the heart rate down and get botox injections around the eyes to reduce blinking, though. I figure all of that must be taxing on his body.

Gotta be on the bevel, rather than the cutting edge itself.

There's a picture in the article, it looks like the cutting edge. Given that he's engraving quotes on the tip of paperclips, I think the cutting edge of a razor blade is less unlikely than you'd think.

Anyone who does fine work does this, I think. I went through a phase of restoring antique watches, first pocket then wrist - and you get used to balancing holding your breath and making adjustments between pulses. I think I first got into the habit painting tiny details on Warhammer figurines as a kid. Never played, I just painted for other people for the joy of it.

If you work against a plain grey or white background, and you pay attention (turn off some automatic filtering I'm your brain) you can see your pulse - dark in between pulses, light during a pulse, which makes timing easier.

I believe snipers try to do this also when making difficult shots.

Also any target sport too (target shooting, archery, etc). You keep your heartrate down by slow steady breathing, and always try and pull the trigger between beats.

The guy in the article is on a completely different level though if I read it right. Only works at night to avoid lorry vibrations, and sometimes has to wait for over an hour to get the right moment to make a single notch.

>You keep your heart rate down by slow steady breathing, and always try and pull the trigger between beats.

I used to be very active in competitive freestyle archery (scope and release) for both indoor and 3D. You do work to control your breathing and heart rate but I've never heard of anyone trying to time the release to their heartbeat. Instead many competitive shooters train to disconnect the release action from conscious thought. You literally stand a few feet in front of a target for hours, shooting without aiming, and commit to muscle memory the action of triggering your release. "Back tension" releases are very popular in archery specifically because there is no traditional trigger and they are instead activated by tilting or squeezing.

Once you no longer think about releasing you now focus your shooting solely on aiming. When you're ready to shoot you fire off the muscle-memory-trigger thread in your brain and your body just involuntarily goes through the motions of firing the arrow. When done correctly the actual triggering of the shot is a surprise.

Olympic archery is very similar. Olympic shooters use "clickers"[1] on their bow that tells you when to release. You pull the arrow back and began to aim, continue to pull back slowly until the clicker clicks and that triggers and automatic response to relax your hand and loose the arrow. You practice shooting over and over again such that whenever you hear/feel the clicker you release automatically and therefore separate the release process from active thought.

http://www.k1-archery.com/images/product_images/original_ima...

That's kind of insanely cool. :) Thanks for sharing this.

Happy to stand corrected on archery. Very interesting to read your descriptions!

When I was shooting competitively, I could see the crosshairs move off-target with each heart beat. Squeezing the trigger during a beat would inevitably result in failure.

Sometimes I would actually use my heartbeats to help with shooting. It tended to do a sideways figure 8 pattern, so it was "just" a matter of learning when the sights would lead towards a good place and sometimes even pulling the trigger as it's moving towards the target's center. With my awful trigger control, it took a long time to learn to do it well.

Yes!! I also have a sideways figure 8 sight "drift". It's just a matter of timing the trigger pull at the right point of the movement. Granted, it would be great if I didn't have the movement at all... but...

Tell me about it. Then there's the incredible feeling of frustration when you're close to the perfect shot... and then your muscles start to run out of oxygen and build up lactic acid..... 7 seconds in.

I've never had to walk off the line because of it (too stubborn), but everyone else on the team did, every other competition.

I used to do competitive shooting back in the day. I got 4th in nationals in overall and first in JROTC overall for my last ever competition. I was only a few points away from being olympic quality and actually turned down a full ride scholarship from a coach who sent students to the olympics.

That said, I didn't do anything fancy to stay aware of my breathing minus a few things that you learn in your first couple days (breathe in, breathe out, breath in, breath out 20%). Overtime, you just get a sense of where the rifle tends to point and you learn to control it. Nothing fancy :). It wasn't really a conscious thought process by any means and my coach didn't really push conscious breathing.

The biggest thing he would push was mindfulness of where your shot ended up. He would take away my damn sighting scope and get me to predict where each shot landed.. which was actually incredibly helpful as much as I hated to admit.

The things that were much more important than breathing control were keeping calm (mental state, not necessarily breathing), adjusting your "natural point of aim" after each shot, and having a constant awareness of stance and how small changes affected your aim. Then again, my shooting style had a complete lack of the usual advised technique. My trigger control was garbage, for example. I met up with him after high school and shot for a bit. When he saw my shooting stance, he asked, rudely, "Where'd you learn that faggoty-ass stance from?". "You", was accurate. :)

Funny thing. Apparently shooters and swimmers in their teens suffer from the problem of high pitched noise while sleeping. It's really stupidly embarrassing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catathrenia

tidbit: alcohol is only a banned substance in target sports

It's called combat tactical breathing. Breathe in through nose to a four count, hold breath for four count, breathe out to four count. Reduces heart rate, calms you down.

You'll sometimes see references to allowing your sightline to naturally move in a tiny sideways figure 8 pattern. Supposedly, the lobes of the 8 are your heartbeat, and the spot where it crosses, "in between"...the spot to pull.

Not sure if the cause/effect is really heartbeat, but interesting nonetheless.

Actually, that could equally have been where I learned the habit too - started with .22 rifles when I was about five - shooting bottle caps with iron sights, very similar fine motor adjustments when lining up a shot.

... which he keeps artificially low by taking beta blockers. He is also a lifelong swimmer which is how he kept his heart rate low before the beta blockers. Additional performance enhancing drug : botox to prevent blinking too much.

Even with that, the stuff he creates is pretty amazing. It is done under a microscope and I bet it rivals physical micro-machining techniques by CNC (light exposure is obviously on a different level).

The difference between me and this guy is that I'd spend 20 years developing a micro-engraving machine to automate this.

And when you died, the machines would still exist.

It's a mixed bag. I still have a lot of respect for artisans, but I think the short answer is, building the machine is probably worth it if you want to scale up.

It wouldn't be 20 years, http://hackaday.com/2015/01/13/cheap-diy-microscope-sees-ind... describes making an electron microscope from a piezo buzzer and a needle which achieves atomic resolution.

But the existence of the bicycle does not make the marathon any less an accomplishment.

No I mean it would take me 20 years. I'm sure people who make their own scopes for a living could hack one up fast.

(BTW I make microscopes for a hobby and the cheap EM scopes blow me away)

Willard Wigan does this too, but makes micro sculptures:

http://teamcoco.com/video/micro-sculptor-willard-wigan-pt-1-...

Cool.

Fun quote:

It's a nightmare when I start, and a dream when I finish.

That made me think "so, it's like any large software project in reverse, then". :)

The nightmare of programming is that nothing is ever finished... endless horror.

There is also something deeply Lovecraftian about the way programmers use the word "logic" as some ominous mass noun of unspeakable complications and strange causality... unfathomable abstractions... like the "alien geometries" of the Elder Ones.

Reminds me of Peter Welch's "Programming Sucks" rant from 2014:

http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

Another funny bit was when he mentioned having to be careful not to inhale the work.

"He has dropped completed works and been unable to find them again on the greasy carpet of his studio."

That could be rather disappointing!

If nothing else, you would think after the first time he would have replaced the carpet with some sort of flat lining which would make finding objects much easier.

Skills like this astonish me. It's kind of sad when I realize that I'll never be as good at anything as he is at this. The kind of talent and dedication involved is tremendous.

This reminded me of In the Reign of Harad IV[1].

[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/10/in-the-reign-of...

I thought he'd be using something like a pantograph[1], but doing it fully by hand is even more amazing. Any idea what sort of resolution he's achieved? 10um? 1um? 100nm?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph

http://grahamshortart.com/ He has this website which hasn't been kept up to date but shows some of his work

Pretty amazing stuff. But he is paying quite a price with taking all the drugs and having to use Botox for his eyes.

Beta blockers aren't particularly bad for you, and as for the effects, from what I've heard, it's probably slightly more comfortable to be on them than not. As for the botox, that can be removed whenever, although removing your ability to blink is not a the most health-oriented response to eye-strain related over-blinking. He's old though, there's a good chance he won't live to see that decision bite him.

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