Workers With Gifted Hands

These days, machinery can be relied upon to create just about anything, but even the most advanced machine is no match for some of the worlds most skilled workers. From crafty carved candles to pencil lead creations and concrete connoisseurs, let’s explore some incredible workers with gifted hands.

Glass Blower

During an Italian glass blowing tour, this incredible worker demonstrates some serious skill by making an intricate horse figurine out of molten glass in 60 seconds!

With the glass at just the right viscosity, he pulls it into shape with a series of metal tongs and tweezers. But it cools and solidifies quickly, giving him just seconds to perfect each limb. The end result is a piece of art that looks like it could have taken hours to make! This guy is a master glass worker, no "equestrian" about it!

Sugar Candy Blowing

In the busy streets of Shenzhen China, one street vendor proves sugar can be a treat in more ways than one. And not just any kind of sugar, he’s using pulled sugar, a type of sugar that has been melted. It’s folded over repeatedly until it’s cool enough to handle.

Then, he rolls it in his hands until the sugar is flexible enough to work with. Using his finger to create thin tube attached the main globule of sugar, he hands the tube to his customer who begins to inflate the stretchy mixture as he molds it.

He quickly shapes the rapidly solidifying figure using nothing but his hands, creating an incredible translucent sculpture of a pig! Then, he adds the finishing touches of a pulled sugar snout, along with some colorful eyes and ears before handing it over to the customer!

But as delicious as it may look, this incredible craft is not meant for eating. Unless you really want to find out what your own breath tastes like!

Cotton Candy Crafter

There are some foods that really do look too good to eat, but a street vendor in Shandong, China, has taken that to a whole other level with some gigantic cotton candy flowers! He uses a traditional looking cotton candy machine, which has a heater that reduces hard sugar into a kind of syrup. The spinning head then whips round at 3,400 revolutions per minute, spraying the syrup through tiny holes where it solidifies almost instantly into long, skinny strands.

By adding different colored sugar, the strands themselves change color which he then catches on a stick and layers on top of one another. After each new layer of color is complete, he uses a stick to pinch in the top, making the colored sugar look like the blooming petals of a flower. He repeats the process over and over and over until it’s ready in all its gigantic glory!

Genius Tile Installation

Without using any kind of tape measure, this floor tiler quickly marks a tile against the tricky looking shape of a door frame. He draws these marks out fully using the edge of another tile, and then swiftly scores and cuts out the appropriate piece of tile. It’s a perfect fit! You have probably never seen tiling work done like that before.

Bao Master

Bao is a delicious kind of soft, steamed bun that originated in China and they can hold all manner of tasty fillings. But some are filled more than others, like the one below that’s about to be crammed with 7 egg yolks! Fitting all 7 yolks into the palm of your hand is no easy task, never mind flawlessly folding up the pastry around them without letting a single one escape! We can all agree that was "egg-spertly" done.

Bas-Relief By Yana Bickert

If you’re a seasoned artist, just about anything can be your canvas, something that Yana Bickert demonstrates effortlessly. Bickert specializes in bas-relief decor, which is a kind of sculpting style that models over an existing surface without taking any part of it away. As you can see, she can take just about any wall and transform it into a staggeringly beautiful piece of art.

Her artwork creates everything from trees to incredible underwater seascapes. And she even recreated Paris in someone’s kitchen!

Balustrade Craft

Have you ever wondered where the beautiful balustrades that line fancy looking balconies like this are made?

©Engin Akyurt/Pexels

While many pre-cast balustrades look uniform enough to have been made in factories, some like these are actually made by pairs of very gifted hands. To start, this next worker adds water to a concrete mix before scooping it into a steel balustrade mold. He uses a little at a time and packs it in, making sure it’s crammed into every last nook and cranny.

Once it’s loaded with enough concrete to keep its shape, the mold is unlocked. But to make sure nothing is left sticking to the sides he taps it away. These are then left to set, with the cement in the concrete bonding all the components together. Concrete usually takes about 36 hours to dry out and solidify, before being used like this to create some pretty brilliant balconies!

Loster Craft

In Indonesia, the hot climate sees a lot of buildings use cement blocks with beautiful vents built into them. These are called losters!

©Culture Vannin via Wikimedia Commons

As intricate as they may look, the way they’re made is even more impressive. One producer of these blocks demonstrates that by using a simple metal mold, you can create a loster with nothing more than cement and skill. Cement is loaded into the mold around several interior pegs.

Once the cement is packed in firmly, the entire case is flipped over, and the pegs are removed. The rack is then taken apart piece by piece, and the brick comes out as one, with all the perfectly placed holes and details in it!

Egg Carving

Using nothing more than a high-speed engraver, some sanding paper and a very light touch, this craftsman begins to turn a couple of whole eggshells into a stunning piece of art. This type of engraving tool is usually used to create the intricate details you see in woodwork, but here he’s using it to gently remove the color and reshape the shell.

Can you take a guess at what he’s made? It’s an egg cup, made out of egg cups! What a cracking job!

Genius Small Hole Patching

No matter how careful you are, if you live in a home long enough, you’ll probably end up needing to patch a few small holes in the walls. Sounds like a pain in the butt to fix, but fortunately one very gifted worker has found a quick solution to this hollow problem.

Watch as they effortlessly spread filler over a series of holes and skim it back without any extra bleeding off the edge of their knife! While it’s not the most precise method of plugging those holes, it’s oddly satisfying to see the job done so quickly.

Japanese Dovetail By Theo Cook

Take a look at the incredible piece of woodwork below and have a think: how on earth does it fit together? While most people wouldn’t know where to begin creating such an impossible looking join, master woodworker Theo Cook has perfected the art of this Japanese Dovetail.

To make one, Cook drew out this series of meticulously measured and spaced angles in two ends of wood, designed to interlock at just one very specific angle. He then cut, chiseled and sanded each part of the join to align perfectly with the opposite piece. Finally, by pushing one piece into the other at a 45-degree angle, the two fit snugly into place.

Catalan Vault Brick Working

Red brick vaulted roofs like the one in the image below, known as Catalan Vaults, look like they defy all manner of physics! But the building techniques used to create these gravity defying domes rely on a perfect combination of science and incredibly experienced workers.

©Feliuvilassar via Wikimedia Commons

These builders from Coleman Priske, Domes & Games in Mexico are using a thin, fast setting mortar on very dry bricks. This combination keeps the brick held in place without needing to use any kind of scaffolding. Just take a look at how quickly they can work:

But creating these perfect curves is only half of the job! Once all the corners of the vault have been built in, the final step is to make them all meet in the middle and close up the hole! The builder works his way around and around to the very center, and finishes the vault with a single, well cut piece of brick. That’s a real masterclass in raising the roof!

Cement Dragon Statue

Cement is a versatile substance that binds other materials together. So, it’s surprising to see it being used here not as an adhesive, but as a type of clay. This worker is using layers and layers of cement to create this ornate dragon sculpture!

Anyone who’s ever vandalized a patch of wet cement will know that the mixture is usually a lot wetter than this. So how is this guy able to mold it like clay? According to the video, this guy is just using a simple mixture of cement and sand!

Penny Floor

Some people save up for fancy flooring, but others quite literally use their savings! Penny floors are a unique design that can take hours and hours of work to lay down.

First off, you need a lot of clear setting glue to keep those pennies in place. Then, it’s a matter of painstakingly placing down every single individual penny across the entire floor. Once they’re laid down the area should be grouted to seal the floor and cover up any sneaky gaps. And finally, resin is poured over the top to give it a smooth, shiny finish.

Fastest Roofer Alive

The asphalt shingles you see on the roofs of many buildings are often nailed into place, but instead of a hammer these guys use guns! Nail guns, that is. The worker in the video below demonstrates a super-fast shingling technique that lays the sheets down quicker without the need to even put down the nail gun.

In the space of a minute, this guy managed to nail down 15 sheets of the asphalt shingling. That’s one every 4 seconds! Looks like these guys really nailed this job.

Pencil Carving By Chien Chu Lee

Taiwanese artist Chien Chu Lee proves that a pencil has more than one use. This miniature master creates mind blowing sculptures out of pencil lead, using nothing more than his eye for detail and a knife. It's incredible how he used the blade to create the hollows in this lead sculpture of a DNA strand!

For over 10 years this self-taught specialist has created everything in lead from entire alphabets, to famous landmarks, and even movable chains. Some are even as thin as 1 millimeter! Now that’s what you call a little victory.

World's Fastest Naan Maker

In the town of Croydon in England, you can find some seriously fast food, and it's not McDonalds or Burger King! At the Shadi Bakery they make fresh, Kurdish style naan breads in a matter of seconds. Just watch this master baker spread out the dough:

With just a flick of the wrist, the balls of dough are tossed and transformed into flat frisbee-like discs. Then, they’re stretched over that cloth plug and baked by sticking them onto the inside of a hot stove. Those have got to be the fastest made naan breads in the west of Croydon at least!

Cement Textures

Have you ever wondered how the beautiful moldings found on the outside of some buildings are created? Their meticulous designs look like they take years to carve out. But in some cases, they start off as a freehand design and are finished in a matter of hours!

Using a mixture of sand and cement, this next worker layers the design up gradually, constantly carving and scraping the cement in shape! Eventually he builds up enough layers to begin adding some striking details to the still-wet cement. And the consistency of the mixture he uses allows him to slice out certain parts and flick them away with ease. He then adds some final details to finish this astounding looking piece of custom wall décor.

Cement Leaf Casting

While some incredible cement workers carve out the details piece by piece, others come up with ingenious solutions to save time! Take, for example, this worker, who’s using a really large leaf to create a true-to life cement casting.

First, he props the leaf up on a pile of sand to give it a natural, cupped shape. Then, he lathers the underside of the green fiend with layer after layer of cement and leaves it to set! But once it’s dry, he then begins the seriously satisfying process of peeling off the leaf.

It's a reminder of the time-honored tradition of peeling dried layers of glue off your hands, albeit this process is much greener! And it leaves you with a perfect leaf-like imprint in the stone, which can be used from anything from shelving to a garden decoration.

Hand Carved Candles

I’s fair to say that decorative candles are a world apart from your standard IKEA tealights! But how are they made? For that, we need to take a trip to the DIMSI candle workshop in Russia. Here, a long wick is dipped repeatedly into different colored vats of paraffin wax.

The different waxes build up layers of color, which play an important part in the next phase. The candle is then hung by the wick, and a candle carver takes a knife to the wax! Peeling portions away opens up the candle like petals on a flower, except these petals can be curled around and stuck down into increasingly intricate shapes. You can watch the process below, it almost looks too good to burn!

Hand Pulled Noodles

Did you know some styles of Chinese noodles have been hand-pulled for over 4,000 years? Sadly, the art of the hand pulled noodle is becoming something of a lost art-form. But there are still diligent people, like an LA street food vendor of the hilariously named ‘Live Noodz’ stall, who works to ensure the amazing method is kept alive!

He starts by making a simple dough made from flour and water. Then, he stretches it into long, thin strands by whipping the dough up into the air and twisting it around. Some fancy finger work keeps the strands separated while stretching them out further, until these oodles of noodles are eventually ready to be boiled!

Sculptures By Luo Li Rong

Have you ever looked at a stone sculpture of a person and been amazed at how soft their clothes and skin look? Well, the work of Luo Li Rong is so intricately detailed that its hard to believe her sculptures aren’t actually alive!

This Chinese artist carves her renaissance-style sculptures in a state of motion by shaping the clay or bronze she uses to mimic fabric caught in a breeze. The effect is utterly breath-taking, and is so life-like that it’s easy to believe there really is a breeze flowing around the room.

But the sculptures aren’t always so pretty! Raw edges and rough surfaces of unfinished carvings like the one below gives them an almost demonic quality! Even though the process may look a little scary, Luo Li’s masterful touch eventually shapes them into impossibly delicate looking creations. What a sculpting savant!

Cement Column Craft

Building projects that rely on fine details often need specialist equipment. But sometimes all you need is pure expertise, as this next worker demonstrates. He’s creating the foot of an ornate column, but instead of using a mold he’s shaping the cement with nothing more than a trowel. He packs the cement on and levels it out using a narrow board, creating a set of freehand curves on the corner of the column that look nearly identical!

Then he smooths each section over with a brush before getting down to the really impressive part, the carving! Using a rough stencil, the worker expertly slices out the main bulk of the design before carving all the extra impressive details through nothing more than freehand! Even though it’s been done without any specific measurements or special equipment, the final product is an absolutely flawless column foot!

Brick Art Sculpture By Brad Spencer

It’s not just clay, bronze, and cement that people can use to make statues, as proven by the mind-blowing brilliance of Brad Spencer’s brickwork sculptures!

But achieving these eye-catching designs is no easy feat! First, Brad carves his desired design into a stack of clay bricks, and because they haven’t been fired and hardened yet, they’re much easier to shape. But doing it like this, instead of carving it out of a fully assembled wall, means he has to compensate for the effect that the layers of mortar in between the bricks will have.

Fortunately, he’s a well-practiced pro! Once he’s happy with the design, he fires up a kiln to a toasty 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and transforms the carved clay into strong and durable bricks. After that, he assembles the entire sculpture like a giant jigsaw puzzle, cementing each brick into place with care! The final products all look more like optical illusions than true-to-life sculptures. Except they’re all so captivating you won’t want to look away!

If you were amazed at these creative workers with gifted hands, you might want to read about ingenious smart furniture with clever designs! Thanks for reading.