As Neanderthals were no less intelligent than you or I I will not take offence at that Barry.
Cave man skills they are and still earn me a living. I used to know an old chap who worked for Fords most of his life, his job was exclusively modelling car parts in clay, interiors mainly, steering wheels, dash boards, all mocked up in clay first, he loved his job and who wouldn't!
Making parts by hand and by eye are all path of the coarse in my line of work, two parts from an antique instrument will look exactly the same until you put some callipers across them and see they are not, its called hand made! On decorative parts it doesn't matter unless its a scale or optics on an instrument. The same applies to old hand made car body panels, no two are the same just so long as its not picked up by the eye its doesn't matter. My Inter front wheel fenders are very different when placed side by side but on the car you would never know. With mechanical parts of course its a different story precision is all. Being a tape measure designer though Barry, I guess you cant resist the temptation to measure everything?