Machinery in the 1860's
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26 October 2014 at 10:07 am #120130
Just when you thought everything was one by hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5tC66rAP8
26 October 2014 at 12:21 pm #120132Fascinating insight, thanks for sharing. I like to think there wouldn’t have been many places with the full range of machinery that guy has.
The presenter’s a bit of a character isn’t he. I think if you put Will Ferrell in his place, giving the same performance word-for-word, you could call it a comedy.
26 October 2014 at 12:56 pm #120134That’s a good one. This one also talks about how machinery was changing the way traditional shops were getting the work done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLseSXnH0Fk26 October 2014 at 9:37 pm #120143That was very interesting to watch a very complex man indeed. You can clearly see when supply and demand took charge how the quality of workmanship just diminished, did you also notice the part when Roy showed I think it was the belt driven powered by the steam engine bandsaw that Thommas then laid off two workers. This is very same problem we are faced with today.
History explains alot about us who we are, how we got there and where are we going, Thommas Day’s life approach to tackling high supply and demand led him to purchase machinery in which led him to lay two workers. The shoddy drawer bottoms and missing dovetails are another example of profits over workmanship. Notice the pattern in this modern day world we are still doing the same thing, machinery has replaced many workers therefore leading to mass unemployment, high supply and demand leads to shoddy workmanship, lower quality materials, mass produced junk yielding higher profits.
I’m certain the artisans working for Thommas Day were very much qualified and skilled to produce good clean work but the pressure on Thommas to mass produce to meet the high demand and grow his business led him to push his workers beyond their capacity which ultimately led them to making serious mistakes and to cut corners by leaving saw marks and chatter marks etc. Don’t blame the workers of China and Brazil, blame the slave masters behind them.
Machinery, supply and demand, greed for wealth has brought us to where we are today and continue to be our own demise hence why the rich keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
The rich don’t give a damn while us poor sods do, they mass produce while we only produce, they grow fatter while we become anorexic, their businesses expand while we go out of business, They die and are forgotten along with their products while we live forever in volumes of books and our furniture remains to be marvelled, examined by intellectuals and other craftsmen of the day.
We leave a legacy they leave nothing.
26 October 2014 at 10:20 pm #120145Every society based upon the monetary system suffers from the same repeating problem. Quality vs. profit. The sad fact is that profit always wins. There has always existed pockets of people who choose quality though. The price is usually that they suffer monetarily. Some are lucky and are able to find a niche market, but most suffer for sticking with quality of craftsmanship.
However, the blame is not entirely on those seeking the profits. If the consumer would refuse to accept the “junk”, then the “junk” would cease to be offered. In the case of Thomas Day, if the people buying the low quality furniture would have demanded better, I’m sure he would have obliged them.
So our burden, as craftsman, is twofold. We must strive to create items of quality and we must refuse to purchase inferior products. This is not any easy path and sometimes necessity will dictate our choices, but we, society as a whole, need to do all that we can to bring forth a change.
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