5 ms·

To be good, scissors have to be sharp, even, and fit together juuust right. A tiny deviance creates a huge about of suck. Someone mentioned Fiskars above. The f

To be good, scissors have to be sharp, even, and fit together juuust right. A tiny deviance creates a huge about of suck. Someone mentioned Fiskars above. The first time I used these I ran around looking for things to cut. I just couldn't believe scissors could be that good. They were. This type of reductionism is seldom helpful. Painting is just smearing oil on a canvas? Programming is just "typing a bunch of stuff"? I don't think so. Craft matters.

hinkley 8y ago
This kind of reductionism is why I have to wade through a pile of barely adequate tools every day at work. Part of my brain knows that people who use physical tools for a living use old and slightly busted ones all the time, but another part fantasizes about pulling a Peter Gibbons and going to work with people who actually appreciate the value of the right tool.
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  In my manual labour days I often bought old tools because they were so much better than the new ones...except... Take a Stanley number 5 Jack Plane. An old one weighs less, is flatter, has nicer handles, the iron sits better and the adjustments are better... than a new Stanley. However they are both worse than a Veritas one made on modern equipment, but... at four times the price. What happened here is that a Stanley in 1940 cost a serious amount of money. A Stanley in 2018 its quite cheap because Stanley decided to stay mass market by reducing quality. However the space they left has been back-filled by newer higher quality makers using modern materials and techniques.
  - msisk6 8y ago
    Story: I just bought a new house and the space for the kitchen range was too small by just a hair for the new induction range my wife insisted on. The construction manager came out and proceeded to take apart a utility knife to get the blade out to use it as a substitute scraper to shave the wood cabinet down a bit. I told the guy I have a good small Lie-Nielsen block plane already unpacked in the garage that'll do a much better job, but he insisted on the knife blade. And you know what? It turned out just fine. I think a lot of folks nowadays have never used a really good high-quality tool and have no idea what they're missing.
    - hinkley 8y ago
      Heck for that job he should get or make a couple of scrapers. They take up no space.
dingo_bat 8y ago
> To be good, scissors have to be sharp, even, and fit together juuust right. A tiny deviance creates a huge about of suck. Do you think the tolerances in a Samsung phone manufactured in China are laxer than that? High quality scissors can be manufactured in China. For people in UK to waste their time on it is unnecessary. And that's probably the reason why such endevours usually fail.
- wahern 8y ago
  They can be manufactured well in China, but will they? Companies like Apple have the clout, money, and time to supervise production and guarantee quality. But the typical story is that some small or mid-sized business abandons a reliable and high-quality domestic process to the promises of some sales rep from China. Consistency and quality drop precipitously but it's excused because the CEO has already relegated the company to the race to the bottom. The domestic companies are usually the ones left behind after a century of intense competition during a time when quality and longevity were paramount and customers couldn't afford to constantly replace equipment. Chinese industry has arisen in a global market built around a different dynamic--cheap industrial labor selling products to rich consumers who are less discerning, or in any event don't mind buying throwaway tools. That says little about the inherent skill of Chinese labor and industry and everything about how free markets operate and industrial processes evolve.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    Moving production to China is often (but not always) a cost-cutting measure. It's often about volume - Chinese manufacturers can scale production in a way that Western manufacturers can't. They have shorter and more agile supply chains and a much deeper labour pool. Scaling up production always carries the risk of quality degradation, mostly because you're diluting the skill base of your manufacturing workforce. China can't match the quality of the very best German and Japanese manufacturers, but they're pretty damned close in a lot of areas. Quality usually starts to slip because the OEM customer demands it - cutting corners to keep the price down is usually the more profitable option.
  - culot 8y ago

hinkley 8y ago

This kind of reductionism is why I have to wade through a pile of barely adequate tools every day at work. Part of my brain knows that people who use physical tools for a living use old and slightly busted ones all the time, but another part fantasizes about pulling a Peter Gibbons and going to work with people who actually appreciate the value of the right tool.

jimnotgym 8y ago
In my manual labour days I often bought old tools because they were so much better than the new ones...except... Take a Stanley number 5 Jack Plane. An old one weighs less, is flatter, has nicer handles, the iron sits better and the adjustments are better... than a new Stanley. However they are both worse than a Veritas one made on modern equipment, but... at four times the price. What happened here is that a Stanley in 1940 cost a serious amount of money. A Stanley in 2018 its quite cheap because Stanley decided to stay mass market by reducing quality. However the space they left has been back-filled by newer higher quality makers using modern materials and techniques.
- msisk6 8y ago
  Story: I just bought a new house and the space for the kitchen range was too small by just a hair for the new induction range my wife insisted on. The construction manager came out and proceeded to take apart a utility knife to get the blade out to use it as a substitute scraper to shave the wood cabinet down a bit. I told the guy I have a good small Lie-Nielsen block plane already unpacked in the garage that'll do a much better job, but he insisted on the knife blade. And you know what? It turned out just fine. I think a lot of folks nowadays have never used a really good high-quality tool and have no idea what they're missing.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    Heck for that job he should get or make a couple of scrapers. They take up no space.

dingo_bat 8y ago

> To be good, scissors have to be sharp, even, and fit together juuust right. A tiny deviance creates a huge about of suck. Do you think the tolerances in a Samsung phone manufactured in China are laxer than that? High quality scissors can be manufactured in China. For people in UK to waste their time on it is unnecessary. And that's probably the reason why such endevours usually fail.

wahern 8y ago
They can be manufactured well in China, but will they? Companies like Apple have the clout, money, and time to supervise production and guarantee quality. But the typical story is that some small or mid-sized business abandons a reliable and high-quality domestic process to the promises of some sales rep from China. Consistency and quality drop precipitously but it's excused because the CEO has already relegated the company to the race to the bottom. The domestic companies are usually the ones left behind after a century of intense competition during a time when quality and longevity were paramount and customers couldn't afford to constantly replace equipment. Chinese industry has arisen in a global market built around a different dynamic--cheap industrial labor selling products to rich consumers who are less discerning, or in any event don't mind buying throwaway tools. That says little about the inherent skill of Chinese labor and industry and everything about how free markets operate and industrial processes evolve.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  Moving production to China is often (but not always) a cost-cutting measure. It's often about volume - Chinese manufacturers can scale production in a way that Western manufacturers can't. They have shorter and more agile supply chains and a much deeper labour pool. Scaling up production always carries the risk of quality degradation, mostly because you're diluting the skill base of your manufacturing workforce. China can't match the quality of the very best German and Japanese manufacturers, but they're pretty damned close in a lot of areas. Quality usually starts to slip because the OEM customer demands it - cutting corners to keep the price down is usually the more profitable option.
- culot 8y ago