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The Knife Maker

thisismadebyhand.com

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Re: The Knife Maker

#161

Post by ericd »

gchpaco wrote: post #145
ericd wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might just be that a pull saw is simpler to mass produce well, since it lends itself well to stamping - it mainly needs tensile strength, which I think is much easier than compressive rigidity.

That is true, but the teeth in a Japanese crosscut saw are very delicate and fiddly and there's lots of room to screw them up if you don't care about the product. And yet (with some exceptions) they actually seem to come sharp from the factory, something that is still a novelty in Western tools. They're not all good--I have a modern pruning saw that is particularly crudely made--but they're startlingly high quality i…

That is pretty shocking that you could mess up a chisel... that seems like something people could figure out a single good design for and repeat for eternity.

Re: The Knife Maker

#162

Post by ars »

tptacek wrote: post #132
spacemanaki wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"functionally equivalent objects produced in an efficient fashion" I haven't actually used this guy's knives. But I've used cheap knives and I've cut myself on cheap, dull knives that don't hold their edge. And I've used moderately expensive knives. It's night and day. Cheap knives just aren't functionally equivalent. The same can be said about coffee, chocolate and other fair trade stuff. Ground Maxwell coffee that…

Most of the "best" knives are in fact mass-produced. In fact, the knives this guy is talking about, made by "a couple of robots in Germany" aren't "cheap knives"; they're the super expensive heavy full-tang forged Wusthof and Henckel's knives that are themselves kitchen status symbols. But even allowing for that: there are extremely good mass-produced stamped "cheap" knives. Cooks Illustrated's favorite knife is a st…

The best knives I've ever used are these: http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?q=ceramic+...

They are incredibly sharp - you can cut a loaf of very soft bread without squishing it at all - and no crumbs either.

Re: The Knife Maker

#163

Post by ars »

sliverstorm wrote: post #65
patio11 wrote: post #33

I'm torn between "This guy clearly enjoys his work, bully for him." and "The handmade movement is an extravagantly wasteful alternative to a factory in China to give rich white people an opportunity to demonstrate their social superiority over people who use functionally equivalent objects produced in an efficient fashion." (c.f. organic food, fair trade coffee, etc etc. This topic makes me positively Marxist. There…

Why is the handmade movement extravagantly wasteful? The main resource added in handmade prodcuts is time, and unlike helium, crude oil and heavy metals, time is not a scarce resource we risk using up.

It wastes energy - a lot of it. In the manufacturing, in transportation, and tied up in capital equipment.

Re: The Knife Maker

#164

Post by there »

3pt14159 wrote: post #3
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…

Great site. Even the HTML looks like it was made by hand, except the weird obfusticated javascript at the bottom. Edit: it looks like he is using expression engine for the site.

i noticed that too. it builds the contact link, so the obfuscation is to hide the email address from spammers.

Re: The Knife Maker

#165

Post by ars »

culturestate wrote: post #106
bryanlarsen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases the $15 pot from WalMart is better than the $50 pot. It's thinner than the $50 pot, so it reacts to adjustments in temperature a lot faster. The coating is simple thin Teflon, so it wears out a lot faster than the $50 pot, but it actually has better non-stick properties than the $50 pot. I've got expensive pots, but the skillets that I use the most are a $5 teflon/aluminum skillet I got from Loblaws tha…

(A bit off-topic, but...) I've supported myself on the side over the years as a cook, and I can tell you there are some misconceptions there. The difference in heating time is marginal, but thicker bottoms disperse heat _far_ more evenly, preventing hotspots that can ruin whatever you're cooking. Thin pans also have a tendency to warp, but you've solved this by replacing it every six months. As far as nonstick proper…

Teflon is pretty much the ultimate in inert. There is no way you are leaching any chemicals into your food. You could scrape the coating off and eat it and it would do nothing.

Re: The Knife Maker

#166

Post by Causification »

Handmade knives are for people with more money than sense. If you actually USE knives in the field, then you know that the best knives are made by people who came up with brilliant designs and techniques and used them to start small companies that combine the best of both worlds, like Busse and RAT. A knife from a small, semi-automated company will cost half of what this guy charges and last ten times as long because it's built on genius and not an irrational attachment to handmade items. You can watch Joel whinge on about his life story and then pay five hundred dollars for a kitchen knife, or can spend half the money on a Scrap Yard Scrapper you could literally pound through three of these knives stacked together, assuming you had a sledgehammer.

Re: The Knife Maker

#167

Post by rkalla »

Did anybody else get absolutely electrified when he described working in that warehouse of shops with other creators and how the creative energy was amplifying itself?

That sounds intoxicating. I would love a dev environment like that with a small team. I have experienced this one time professionally in its truest rawest sense... A small team hacking on fun problems. It was phenomenal, literally hopping out of bed in the morning just to get to the office.

Anyone else experience this before? (not necessarily with dev if you have a good story)

Re: The Knife Maker

#168

Post by wladimir »

brycecolquitt wrote: post #108
mapleoin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that fair trade coffee benefits "the white man" rather than the producers in the third-world country? That's exactly the opposite of what fair trade means. Also, hand-made isn't fighting against capitalism, it's fighting against mass-production, sweat-shops and machine-people jobs like the ones portrayed on Chaplin's City Lights or even Discovery Channel's How It's Made .

> Also, hand-made isn't fighting against capitalism, it's fighting against mass-production, sweat-shops and machine-people jobs like the ones portrayed on Chaplin's City Lights or even Discovery Channel's How It's Made. That's capitalism. To be more specific, those are inevitable effects of capitalism.

The inevitable effects of capitalism as taken to the extreme, losing any sense of humanity. Which seems to be where we're going. However, I don't agree it has to be this way. Comments like yours push any form of capitalism into the bad stuff corner, throwing out the baby with the bath water IMO.

Re: The Knife Maker

#169

Post by lmm »

bh42222 wrote: post #64
cschmidt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying that the main benefit of fair trade to the consumer is a sense of superiority or reduced guilt over those who drink "regular" coffee. That sort of benefit always strikes me as a bit of a "luxury good" as well, in the sense that the benefit isn't about the functionality or quality of the coffee itself. There is of course a benefit to the producer as well, in the form of a fair price. I imagine most of the…

What kind of pedantic asshole cares if the main benefit of fair trade is a sense of superiority? And it's quite something to claim the sense of smugness some people feel is a bigger deal than higher prices for farmers! Humans are instinctive, not as much as other animals, but still quite a bit. This is no way news. That we are driven by all kind of social trends, rather than pure reason is also damn old hat. I think…

If your real aim was to improve the lives of third-world farmers, you'd buy cheaper non-fair-trade coffee and donate the money saved to an organization that helped those farmers more efficiently.

Re: The Knife Maker

#170

Post by lmm »

Nessuss wrote: post #153
patio11 wrote: post #33

I'm torn between "This guy clearly enjoys his work, bully for him." and "The handmade movement is an extravagantly wasteful alternative to a factory in China to give rich white people an opportunity to demonstrate their social superiority over people who use functionally equivalent objects produced in an efficient fashion." (c.f. organic food, fair trade coffee, etc etc. This topic makes me positively Marxist. There…

The essence of capitalism is that consumers buy what goods or services they think are worth for them, otherwise they don't. If a handmade knife is worth more to a chef then a china created one, then the chef benefits. Remember, knives are their tools of trade, just like for many of us computers are the tools of trade - who doesn't want the very best tools? Even if the knife is not better than a mass produced one, as…

As a serious computer guy I always bought the cheapest mass-produce computer I could get for the specs.

(Not really contradicting you, just thought it was interesting on the "who doesn't want the very best tools?" side)

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