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The Knife Maker

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Re: The Knife Maker

#21

Post by bricestacey »

jeira wrote: post #13
marisela_arias wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"10,000 hours of training, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Gladwell based this assertion on the work of Anders Ericsson, who studied classical violinists and found that, in every case, it had taken a regimen of 2-3 hours a day for 10 years to develop their abilities. Later research by Ericsson and others confirmed similar results in other fields." http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/on-luck-succ…

I don't think it is as straightforward as that. Imagine you're learning chess and you have a chess master as your teacher, you are going to annihilate someone who has putted the same amount of time, even more, but who doesn't have such a good teacher.

Yeah, the original states that the practice must be deliberate. Of course, generally better practice would prevail.

Re: The Knife Maker

#22

Post by pavel_lishin »

jerf wrote: post #14
mapleoin wrote: post #12

This is the most inspirational/life-changing video I've seen all year. I really think that there is a huge amount of stuff that we could start building or making locally, individually with skill, craft and dedication. I would love to be able to work with my hands in a workshop, learning to make unique and masterful things from a master craftsmanship instead of sitting for 8 hours a day in the office dealing with thin…

So do it.

I imagine that he can't afford to lose income for the time it would take to train.

Re: The Knife Maker

#23

Post by subpixel »

kitcar wrote: post #4

I don't totally get the thought that handmade is always better. Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg .

Making and selling handmade products does not guarantee happiness or success (see http://nyti.ms/srgRtu). I think in the vast majority of cases, 'doing it by hand' is probably not the answer.

What's inspiring about this guy is that he's succeeding by serving a vibrant professional market. The chefs who drop a grand on a couple of his knives are using them in the kitchen to make money. They want the best tools for the job, and everyone wins. It's product/market fit.

So kudos to him.

But don't get so inspired you drop everything to build the most beautiful product in the world believing people will buy it _because_ of how hard you worked on it or how awesome it is.

Re: The Knife Maker

#25

Post by diego_moita »

kitcar wrote: post #4

I don't totally get the thought that handmade is always better. Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg .

> I don't totally get the thought that handmade is always better.

This. I live in a 3rd world country (Brazil) and see a lot of truth in what you say. This film talks about art, not about consistent production of quality.

Take a man with passion, resources, intelligence and immense dedication and he will produce a work of high quality; doesn't matter if it is shoes, painting, engineering, suits or knives.

But it just doesn't scale. You won't find many more people with the same skills. You won't be able to produce as much as 15 robots in Germany. And you also need an extremely up-scale market for your product (NY food scene, in this case). And you also need very efficient marketing (in this case a photographer to introduce him to the chefs community).

Bottom line: this guy is like a panda living in a extremely rare and delicate niche environment. Once the NY food scene vanishes he is toast. Find someone in India or China willing to do the same for 1/10 th of the price and he is toast. Have smarter knife making robots in Germany and he is toast. Any tiny little perturbation can get him out of the market.

There's a reason why industrial revolution succeeded. There's a reason why families of hundreds of years of pottery makers in India are going extinct (lighter, cheaper and uglier plastic bowls). There's a reason why my wife's father gave up on beautiful handmade carpentry. The reason is that ugly but cheap and good enough is what almost everyone wants.

Re: The Knife Maker

#26

Post by sk5t »

apechai wrote: post #19

Beautiful knives. I hope the handmade movement really takes off. Maybe people could consume less but unique artifacts that have a real story behind them rather than accumulating mountains of mass produced, generic stuff that ends up in a trash heap a couple of years later.

Handmade / custom knives are quite popular among collectors and enthusiasts. They're expensive, you can't chuck them in the kitchen sink until the next morning or the carbon steel will start to rust, but they are just awesome to use, and I expect they'll be appreciated for generations to come.

Just for a reality check, let's say a top-quality, handmade, 8" chef's knife runs about $500. Most people consider an $80 mass-produced piece from Henckel or Wusthof to be rather extravagant...

Re: The Knife Maker

#27

Post by z0r »

apechai wrote: post #19

Beautiful knives. I hope the handmade movement really takes off. Maybe people could consume less but unique artifacts that have a real story behind them rather than accumulating mountains of mass produced, generic stuff that ends up in a trash heap a couple of years later.

I think it is not mass production that is the issue, but the short lifespan of the things we use. If every tool, every building, every mechanism - electronic or otherwise - lasted forever, or even just ten times as long, our economy and society would undergo radical changes as have never been seen before. (Sorry for what is both an obvious observation and a complete departure from the OP, but I have had this thought stuck in my mind for a while)

Re: The Knife Maker

#28

Post by joelhooks »

snikolic wrote: post #2

This series really got me thinking about the programmer as a craftsman or an artist. I know pg has written about this before, but I felt the connection for the first time as I watched these videos. I really empathized with these guys: the obsession, the passion to perfect some skill, wanting to create utility for others, the risk of failing or looking crazy, the excitement of using something you've built, chasing per…

Last year I went to a Software Craftsmanship gathering in Chicago. It was a great experience.

http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/

Re: The Knife Maker

#29

Post by nobody3141592 »

mapleoin wrote: post #12

This is the most inspirational/life-changing video I've seen all year. I really think that there is a huge amount of stuff that we could start building or making locally, individually with skill, craft and dedication. I would love to be able to work with my hands in a workshop, learning to make unique and masterful things from a master craftsmanship instead of sitting for 8 hours a day in the office dealing with thin…

So merely battering a piece of metal (that other cleverer people have spent 200 years designing the alloys of) into shape is craftsmanship.

While creating a piece of software - a functional machine out of pure thought - is somehow just grunt work?

Re: The Knife Maker

#30

Post by sliverstorm »

kitcar wrote: post #4

I don't totally get the thought that handmade is always better. Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg .

Handmade is not better as a rule, but I think we have arrived at a place in society where 'handmade' has a connotation of great effort invested for quality. In other words, the fact that it is not made on an assembly line suggests that cost savings were not an important part of production, hopefully leading to a superior product.
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