<story><title>The Knife Maker</title><url>http://thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kitcar</author><text>I don&apos;t totally get the thought that handmade is always better.&lt;p&gt;Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&lt;/a&gt; .</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>diego_moita</author><text>&amp;#62; I don&apos;t totally get the thought that handmade is always better.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Take a man with passion, resources, intelligence and immense dedication and he will produce a work of high quality; doesn&apos;t matter if it is shoes, painting, engineering, suits or knives.&lt;p&gt;But it just doesn&apos;t scale. You won&apos;t find many more people with the same skills. You won&apos;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).&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s a reason why industrial revolution succeeded. There&apos;s a reason why families of hundreds of years of pottery makers in India are going extinct (lighter, cheaper and uglier plastic bowls). There&apos;s a reason why my wife&apos;s father gave up on beautiful handmade carpentry. The reason is that ugly but cheap and good enough is what almost everyone wants.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Knife Maker</title><url>http://thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kitcar</author><text>I don&apos;t totally get the thought that handmade is always better.&lt;p&gt;Specifically, reminds me of a skit from Portlandia (IFC) about hand made light bulbs - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85vZpYF3Yg&lt;/a&gt; .</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gaustin</author><text>It&apos;s not that handmade is always, better. It&apos;s that handmade is often better when it comes to specific uses. It&apos;s similar to the choice you make when you write code when you could have taken something off the shelf to use. Sometimes you need the edge that built to purpose gives.&lt;p&gt;This is definitely the case for high performance knives. The choice of steel and the geometry of the edge, bevels and belly can be easily customized to fit the specific purpose of the knife. The first couple of knives I have made don&apos;t look that great, but since I nailed the heat treat and grind they are the best cutting implements I&apos;ve ever owned.</text></comment>