Visited a historic theater in Louisville, the crown molding made me question my miters

Went to see a show at the Palace last weekend and couldn't stop staring at the ceiling. That plaster crown work has curves and corners I wouldn't even attempt with a saw. My miters on baseboard still gap on a 3 foot run, these guys did 50 feet of that stuff with no visible seam. Has anyone actually tried copying old theater molding, or is that a lost cause for modern wood?

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seth_allen11d ago

The more I look at old craftsmanship like that, the more I notice how we've traded durability for speed everywhere. Our houses are built in weeks, their theaters took years. We've got laser levels and compound miter saws, yet we still can't match what a guy with a knife and a chalk line did by hand. It makes you wonder if all our fancy tools just let us make mistakes faster.