The scissors seem like any other pair of steel scissors. I wonder why this hasn't been outsourced to China. These guys could have worked on something more productive than scissors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
The value of an hour of your time depends on each individual; the average value of your time depends on region. (The average salary in Romania, for example, is around $1k before taxes - about $600 after. I assume this is much lower than the average salary in, say, SV.)
Given that, wasting an hour to do something yourself instead of paying someone else to do it for you can be counterproductive (see Ricardo's law).
China has to import ballpoints for ballpoint pens from Japan because they don't have the skills to manufacture them in China.
Incidentally, Japan also make incredibly high quality scissors. I am yet to find good cutting tools from China, whether it's chef knives, pocket knives, scissors, or even sidecutters and other hand tools for electrical work.
My point I'm trying to make, is that China is good at making certain things, but not others.
We can also add that there is a certain amount of elitism to say that it's not worth Westerners' time to manufacture something as lowly as scissors.
Sheffield make the 'finest steel in the world', yet all quality machines seem to use Swedish bearings from SKF! I think everywhere has their specialisms.
Maybe people appreciate the workmanship that comes with a handcrafted pair of scissors. Maybe it is sharper, better made. You don’t know that.
If you are a programmer, how would you feel if I questioned your skills, saying that it should be outsourced to India and you are better off doing something else in your life?
I feel that making scissors is a shitty job, not a great acheivement. I wouldn't want to do such a job myself. I don't have a "hardon for outsourcing".
I don't think you've got the right attitude at all. Making anything physical can usually be done in at least four ways: clumsily by hand, low quality and mass produced, high quality and mass produced, and high quality by hand.
As mass production techniques have improved over the last century, manufacturers have usually tried to pare back costs and avoid over-engineering, relying on tighter tolerances to create an acceptable product. Rather than aiming for high quality, instead they minimize defects and maximize profits. Products tend towards acceptable - good enough to buy - but not delightful.
This has gradually created a space for the fourth mode of making, in the bespoke small batch hipster space. It also benefits from a narrative that soulless mass manufacturing can't easily replicate.
When something is made well with artistry and craft, some of the person who made it goes into the product and reaches the end user. A maker with the right attitude will find that fulfilling. It's a tangible connection with other people, and feels honest and validating.
I guess the craftspeople making scissors don't agree.
From occasional hobbies I find the sense of achievement from a manual or engineering task done well is actually far higher than from software. See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I think the main reason it hasn't been outsourced is reputation. Chinese manufacturers could make great scissors, but how could they convince people to buy them? Higher quality costs more, and Chinese products have a reputation for low quality at low price. If they increase the price many people will assume it's a scam. I don't think the UK has as good a reputation for quality as e.g. Germany, Japan, or Switzerland, but it's better than China, so the marketing cost will be lower.
Actually Chinese manufacturers have come a long way. They initially did produce crappy stuff, however they are now producing quality stuff. A similar progression happened with Japan and Taiwan.
Yes, they are capable of producing good quality stuff, but they have built a reputation over decades for not doing so, and that won't go away overnight. Especially given that quick-buck-ism is still a poison surging through every Chinese company, just waiting to mess everything up. Just look what happened with Huawei when they got a contract from none other than Google. They basically confirmed the stereotype and set Chinese phone manufacturers back 5 years of reputation cultivation, at least.
Ha! No, if anything it is the exact opposite. Do you enjoy a BYD car or a Ford or even a Hyundai? Or do you like to shop at WuMart or WallMart? McDonalds or Dicos?
Etc...
This isn't even getting into food brands like milk powder.
As for scissors and pens and whatever, just jump into your nearest MUJI and see how many customers are in that store compared to its Chinese counterpart.
A good quality pair of scissors (or anything really) is sometimes worth the effort of "puttering" by a true craftsman -- if you're into that sort of thing, my favorite pair of scissors I found in the road and were probably run over a couple times before I came across them but they're apparently high enough quality to take that sort of abuse.
I found my favorite pair in an old house, some decades ago. They probably date from ~1900. Nothing fancy, just office supply grade. Gotta compress the rivet every few years. But they've never really needed sharpening.
Yeah, I could drill it out, and replace with a bolt, compression washer, and cap nut. But that old "fake screw" rivet is stylish. Plus the age-polished handles, with just a little black paint left.
Knives are just a piece of steel too. And yet if you ever find yourself using a quality Chef's knife against a cheap dull Chinese knife, you'll appreciate the difference instantly.
So much so in fact, that your cutting technique will naturally change since using it the way you use dull knives is both more dangerous and less efficient.
Sheffield has a long heritage of making fine cutlery and tools. It's the reason we still have saw makers here (despite the fact their products cost 10x a mass produced version) and why there's a Master Cutler of the city.
A lot of that heritage has been lost but there's still a place in the market for fine hand made things.
You probably own some Sheffield cutlery somewhere.
Not necessarily, but probably an age-driven assumption. The cutlery produced in large quantities was made of stainless steel and exported globally; if it was imported from the UK there's a good chance it was made in Sheffield.
