The Soul of Creations: Manufacturing vs. Crafting

A bit of a weird topic here, hoping for more discussion than debate.

So, I ran across a really good deal on an antique sewing machine and I bought it for DG. Long story short, I found this at a thrift store and snapped it up because 1950s-era Singer sewing machines still out-perform their modern rivals in the reliability department.

After we got it home, I found myself admiring the craftsmanship of what I had purchased. After over 60 years, the hinges were still tight, the wood was still sound. It looked and felt both beautiful and functional.

Basically, everything still held together as it was intended to. This was built to last, from materials that would stand the test of time; oak, cast iron, forged steel...no plastic, no cheap aluminum, and most importantly no planned obsolescence.

Now, I'm not into sewing. But I am a woodworker by trade and I know how to separate good tools from bad ones, and the '52 Singer sewing machine was definitely in the "good tools" category.. And I have noticed that people in my profession are willing to pay top dollar for implements made fifty to a hundred years ago for the simple reason that those tools were made right; no corners cut, no compromise made.

My co-workers revere chisels forged in the 19th century and praise block planes made fifty years ago, because those tools give good service...and they are willing to dedicate the kind of care such implements require, because they know that such dedication will pay dividends in the form of excellent results.

And in the modern age, we appear to have lost this.

If progress is always forward, my girl should have been more excited about the brand-new sewing machine I bought her two years ago, not the antique I just purchased...but such is not the case. She is excited beyond words at finding a sewing machine manufactured a decade before her mother was born...and after examining it (and comparing it to the one I bought her two years ago) I find I agree with her.

Posit: we as a society have forgotten how to craft implements that matter. Tools are no longer something we hand down to our children; rather, they are something we discard when they cease performing well. This is one place where I will legitimately give Oriental cultures an edge when stacked up against us Occidentals...they know that even inanimate objects have a soul and they revere it. Western culture used to know this but somewhere along the way, we forgot it.

I wish we'd remember. Because there is a visceral satisfaction that comes from using a truly well-made implement in the pursuit of craftsmanship.

Thoughts?

edited 24th Jun '12 10:35:49 PM by drunkscriblerian

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

I don't think we've forgotten (well, not all of it) so much as new stuff just isn't designed to matter that much. Although it would certainly have helped if all the old tool builders wrote books on construction rather than just keep it secret unless they're training people.

Fight smart, not fair.

I am quite annoyed by this planned obsolecense. My family had a television that worked after 30 years, and a few years after being forced to get a different one due to the digital switch, that one broke down in a little over a year.

And I would not say that it is an oriental/occidental divide. The old television was a Magnavox and the new one was a Samsung.

edited 25th Jun '12 5:24:48 AM by ohsointocats

Planned obsolescence isn't as pervasive as most people think, it's just pervasive at the lower end of the spectrum.

Fight smart, not fair.

We haven't forgotten.

We can build lightbulbs that last practically forever etc., it's just that this is not profitable in a capitalistic world.

Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.

Make quality, Masterwork, stuff that cost and affordable to only few.

Or sell cheap crap, easily affordable by all.

Each strategy has its own benefits and draw backs.

Human behaviors, as always, is economic behavious.

edited 25th Jun '12 9:06:45 AM by Natasel

This thread could have been answered with The Story of Stuff and locked, I think.

But, as noted, yes, it's not gone because we're stupider or more incompetent than people in the past. It's gone because our corporate overlords derive more profit from us if we're consummate, constant consumers.

It's like what they were doing in 1984 or Brave New World, but with a capitalist instead of collectivist market system to conduct it all and the goal of profit and power rather than control.

"Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?"

I would argue that high quality goods are cost-effective for even the poor. It's not helpful to the poor to buy a hammer only to have it break in a few months so they have to buy another. If they buy one and it lasts so long their grand children can use the hammer, that's way cheaper. But unfortunately, that is unprofitable in modern-day corporate capitalism. You want people to constantly rebuy your junk.

What is needed is an aggressive Advertising campaign to promote the cost benefit advantages of the Mastercraft products then.

People already buy diamond studded watches for wealth display. Marketing a distinctive and stylish product with a utility and image of good sense and taste should be easy.

Well it took a while for me to switch to buying only high quality goods but people view me as elitist in America for doing so. Yet, I'm actually spending less than them because I never rebuy anything. My stuff just lasts forever.

I totally agree. With just about everything said. My neighbor is a carpenter, he used to be the shop teacher at my highschool, and he uses tools that he hasn't changed in years. He's even keeping around planes (the tools used to plane boards) from the 60s because of how well they work and how well they keep.

Meanwhile, just about everything in my home has been assembled either from particleboard, plastic, been stapled together, or easily replaced. Even the old stuff is veneer over high-quality particleboard. And by old, I mean 80's.

The one exception is the coffee table I made in senior year highschool, nothing but wood, glue, nails, screws, and time, and it's still more useful than the one I replaced it with.

Other thing that comes to mind is that this isn't just with building materials. The chair from which I normally type recently broke (a metal slat snapped and we're looking to get it welded back on) and I'm actually thinking of getting a new one rather than repairing the old, because the stitching and fabric on the old has just completely worn out. Lasted two years, already it's worn through.

I'd definitely say that getting higher-quality stuff (and then taking care of it well) is more effective than buying lots of low quality stuff.

edited 25th Jun '12 12:02:03 PM by Enkufka

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

I'm pretty sure that craftsman, or anyone who regularly uses tools in their work, buys the stuff that lasts a long time. My dad's tools are still lying around (he's been dead a few years) and they still work well enough that people have offered to buy them off us. (The ones my brother didn't take for his own business, anyway.) However, if you're not doing construction or woodworking for a living, I think you're going to be far less concerned about the quality of the tools you're using, because you won't be using them that often.

Basically, some people are in a position where they're going to want quality. Some people are in a position where they're going to want cheap. Someone who isn't really into sewing isn't going to worry all that much about the sewing machine if they buy one. A beginner also isn't likely to understand the importance of a sewing machine that's good and might not want to sink a whole lot of money into a new hobby right away.

It also might be a reflection about how much some of us move around these days; a lot of young people don't stay in one place very long. As a result they don't end up buying a lot of high end stuff until they're settled permanently, resulting in people owning a lot of cheap crap.

Anyway, I see lately this pushback against using cheap stuff; people urging others to just do something with what they've already got or buying higher end stuff and just spray painting over things they find in a flea market. (I also think it's more an American thing in some ways, because Wal-Mart and the like failed in Germany and other European countries due to their advertising as cheap rather than as quality.)

The cheap phenomena works well in Canada where people only look at price and not at price for quality. It's a consumer problem where people aren't properly judging value.

It's like, say you're buying dinnerware. I remember I was told "buy expensive dinnerware because if you get cheap ones, you'll have to rebuy later but you don't know what to do with your old crap that's unusable now". So that's what I did, I bought expensive dinnerware. And then I never rebought anything (well I later bought more so I could fill a dishwasher).

Others I've seen who did the opposite, went out to buy the cheapest stuff, found they had to replace it and then that just became expensive.

Most people here, they see, oh hey cutlery for 15 bucks, yay! That other stuff is 60 bucks, made in Canada, much too expensive.

Granted, the more horrible issue is to accidentally buy expensive yet still crappy stuff :P

Woodworkers do indeed buy the best quality tools they can find...which usually means cruising antique stores, estate sales and garage sales for old ones. Especially in the case of chisels and block planes, the newer ones simply aren't made right; the steel is of inferior quality (and in a chisel steel quality is paramount) or they suffer from cut-corner manufacturing...big problems with current block planes are poor cap iron mounts, dodgy blades and out-of-true soles, for example. You can find good modern tools sometimes (IIRC some of the best come from Germany), but they will set you back a fair bit of money.

Modern Japanese chisel sets are usually of much higher quality, but they can be very temperamental in hardwood due to their laminate design; a pin knot in an oak board can take a chunk out of the edge big enough to make a grown man cry. They're also difficult to maintain and require a level of care that the average user just isn't prepared to give an inanimate object.

All the once-good American toolmakers (like Stanley) basically started riding their name, trusting in brand loyalty while letting quality slip. There's a reason that foreign countries started kicking our ass at manufacturing.

The big difference here is that where manufacturers used to design implements to last generations (that 1956 Singer sewing machine I just picked up for DG will, with regular -and easy- maintenance, likely be banging out stitches until we're all riding around in spaceships) now they're designed to last until the warranty runs out.

I can understand this trend with high-tech implements like computers; people usually buy a new computer every few years anyway just to keep up with the times, so making a computer designed to last 20 years would just be stupid. But for time-tested stuff like chisels (technology basically unchanged since Man figured out how to smelt metal), stuff should be better not worse.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

It's basically going to take a cultural change, or people switching to buying all the German made products for their business needs. *shrug* I see some signs of that now, but that has more to do with people buying old furniture than tools, since I'm not in construction or woodworking myself.

With the push to put manufacturing of things back in America, I think a rise in product quality will come. Hopefully.

That's rather unlikely. Quality requires well-paid workers. "Well-paid" isn't a phrase that exists in the dictionary of modern US companies of things to use to describe their employees.

It may be of somewhat better quality, of course. But "better" is not "good."

"Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?"

They canned Canadian unions demanded a "ridiculous" wage of 50k/year to pay people in Wisconsin less than Canadian minimum wage (making American products the type of stuff that would be banned if we required imports to follow Canadian labour laws).

I've noticed, now that it's been mentioned by Drunk, all the high quality stuff that my skilled labour buddies recommend are usually not North American. They all seem to be lamenting North American brands as having become garbage. Everything I own that is awesome, isn't North American. I own very few Canadian made goods and of my high quality goods, most of them are German.

I'm personally unsure how you can reconcile business options with making a product that actually lasts forever. That makes sense from a social and government perspective but it makes no sense from a business perspective.

I think part of the reason why the German economy is such a power house is that they kept building high-quality products and since nobody else was doing it, the whole world is feeding their economic engine.

The fact of the matter is due to mass consumption, we need more things than we do longer lasting things.

That's sort of the point. The lower end of the market was flooded with cheap stuff which didn't exist in significant numbers before recently. Calling that planned obsolescence is a misnomer. Planned obsolescence is what happens when something abruptly fails due to intentional design flaws or deliberately breaking compatibility to force additional purchases. There are reasons that failure occurs beyond this of course, batteries develop crystals and lose charges, aluminum and plastic have less fatigue resistance than iron and other heavier materials. Or it could have a relatively short design cycle to reduce cost of production. Hollering "planned obsolescence" anytime something fails because you bought the cheap crap is burying your head in the sand.

People just need some basic lessons in numbers and ignoring advertising BS. And to take a trip to wikipedia to see if something a brand is advertising actually is true.

Presumably, it'll eventually be hit with "shit happens" events, fires destroying stuff and what not. Problem is that you'd essentially have to have a massive burst of production to ensure everybody had their stuff, and then ramp it down to nothing but replacement rate. Or just never hit attrition rate to begin with.

edited 25th Jun '12 10:20:33 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

I really don't think that having transistors too small to handle a television so that they all melt at once after a year can be anything other than planned obsolesence.

And hell, back in the day (like the '70s), we often even made THOSE to last. I'm willing to bet that if you scrounged up an old Apple II from 1979, it'll be far more likely to still work than the computer you're using right now will be to work in 2045. Even if you look at game consoles, an old NES works just fine, yet the XBOX 360 is notorious for its reliability issues.

That is planned obsolescence. They're designed to all fail at once. Or somebody needs to be fired (never under estimate the sucking power of an incompetent twit). Shit will break down given enough time and usage. Calling the first one the second is panicking.

Fight smart, not fair.

Yes, but an Xbox 360 runs much faster (and thus, hotter) than any old gaming platform from the '90s, and is also generally more mechanically and electronically complex and contains many more parts.

Computers are in fact something you can't really "design to last," because even if your computer does last a decade it won't be able to run anything effectively within three to five years. Computer technology advances too fast to rely on any piece of hardware for an extended length of time.

"Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?"

Breadloaf, I think you answered your own question there. High quality tends to build a good reputation in much of the world. For things like furniture people tend to want things that will last at least ten years. And lots of people also want cars that work reliably for more than that, because most of us aren't rich enough to continually buy a new car every few years. Houses that will continue to stand without constant repair. And various other things that people want quality with.

And obviously people who work in some sort of crafts and manufacturing business want quality tools to work with. I just can't see that the replacement (and maintenance, depending on the product)rate for such things isn't enough to make a business profitable.

Well, it's a profitable business. Except that one person who buys their way through several really cheap products is buying more often and thus more profitable (assuming profit margins are counted). Just need to get people to actually do some math and science to their purchasing decisions instead of engaging in loyalty. Spite's cool though, always gets screwups shafted.

Fight smart, not fair.