Is "Handmade" Really Better?

I've thought a lot about this question over the years. It's a question that comes up quite often concerning musical instruments, but I think you can apply the logic behind it to just about any handmade item.

We always hear about how handmade means better quality, as though several people working on an a guitar (for instance) cannot possibly produce something on the same quality level as what one person working on his own can produce. I guess the logic behind this says that one person working on his or her own, and not under the supervision of a company, nor the constraints of a time-clock, will be able to take the time to do a job right. And for some reason, the people who perpetuate this viewpoint seem to take it almost for granted that a person working solo will be wonderfully gifted and be able to work magic into their creations. Thus, they can charge top dollar for them too. I say hooey!

Since I know a little about guitars I'll take those as my example. I've personally come across many poor sounding, and poorly crafted, handmade guitars with glue drips hanging on the inside and imperfections in the finish on the outside, not to mention poorly executed joints and worse. I've also seen my fair share of people running all kinds of small businesses who work alone and do shoddy work from accountants to house painters. Working solo never made anyone a magician.

Big musical instrument manufacturers can, and often do, make instruments that not only rival, but may surpass, handmade instruments, and do it for a third of the price. Think about this a moment. A luthier building acoustic guitars on his own can only produce six to ten guitars per year on average according to most I've seen interviewed. Some will take on one apprentice, maybe a son, and double production. (People still tend to think of this as handmade though.) Any of them will tell you that it takes a long time to get good at it. Just learning to apply a finish properly takes nearly a year of experience. But these guys have to do it all—everything from carving out curved bridges to doing fretboard inlays and scalloping internal braces. How good could you possibly get at doing everything that goes into the crafting of a guitar, or much of anything else, if you only do a half dozen of them in a year's time?

On the other hand, mass produced instruments are made by people who typically specialize in some aspect of their job. One guy may do nothing but make bridges all day, every day, year in and year out. Another guy may do nothing but make tops. Let's say both of these guys make six per day, five days per week, and have been doing this for five years each. That's roughly 6,500 bridges and tops in five years. Wouldn't you think they'd be incredibly good at making bridges and tops compared to someone who only makes six of each in five years time? Further, workmen who are well-supervised are forced to do good work. But a guy working on his own may do shoddy work in any given area and not think twice about it since he answers to no one.

In my estimation, a product that comes from a well-supervised production line by experienced workmen should generally be higher quality—not worse. Just seems like good horse sense to me.

What Kind Of Person Is Neil Gaiman?

Someone left a negative review on one of Neil Gaiman's books at Amazon a couple of days ago. Gaiman, ever searching out negative reviews of his 6th class work, found this one and asked his Twits, umm...I'm mean Twitter followers (the few who weren't attending the Bette Midler concert that night) to go and trash the review. Within 24-hours there were over 300 thumbs down on his review and over 500 within the space of two days. Nice guy....

Robin Trower - A different Kind of Blues

Nobody ever did as much with sustained notes as Robin Trower. I must have seem him five or six times back in the 80s to early 90s when concert tickets were still only 10 or 12 bucks. I can’t afford to go anymore. But Robin Trower just reeks of soul. Nobody plays like him. You know it’s Trower as soon as he plays his first note.

Daydream



Bridge of Sighs

Dylan Ratigan Hits It On The Head

It's what I've been saying for years. One party is just as corrupt as the other. A systemic sweeping change will have to take place across the entire political spectrum if America is ever going to regain its moral conscience and once again become a republic for all and not just the crooks running the store.

Gobekli Tepe - Thousands of years Before Stonehenge and Sumer

Warning: The above movie is loaded with nonsensical narative, as is typical of the History channel.

Gobekli Tepe is right now the most fascinating archeological site on the planet, and like most of them, it’s in Turkey. By far the most interesting aspect of this site is its age—nearly 12,000 years old—making it many thousands of years older than Stonehenge, the Sphinx, and everything in the Mesopotamian Valley.

It’s appears to have been built by people of a hunter/gatherer culture and predates what we typically think of as civilized peoples. Until now it has always been assumed that it took great civilized societies to build such structures, so this discovery has completely changed the history books.

This was built even before any kind of metal tools had been invented, so it was all done with stone tools, yet there are elaborate carvings on most of the pillars ( as high as 19-feet and weighing several tons) which are laid out in several concentric circles over the hillside. So far less than an acre has been excavated, and that only represents about 5% of the site.

Not one tool has been found at Gobekli Tepe so far, nor has there been any evidence of people having ever lived at the site, therefore, it’s assumed to most likely to have been a place of worship. Over 100,000 animal bones have been uncovered, so it may have been a place of burnt offerings. Oddly, while the animal bones represent the typical animal population in Turkey (60% of the bones are from gazelles) the animals carved on the pillars are mostly things one wouldn’t eat but would consider scary and dangerous like lions, snakes, scorpions and so on. Some of the animals on the pillars are not even indigenous to Turkey. This is truly facinating.

Also check out the Smithsonian's Article about Gobekli Tepe.

Hear The Voice Of Harpo Marx!

Man, I've been looking for this forever. I knew there was at least one recording of Harpo talking. I finally found it on YouTube. In fact two of them. In the first one he says to the man next to him, "You've got to do the talk now", and at the end he leans into the mic and says, "Honk, honk," but you also get to see him dressed nice and without his wig.



In the second one, we get to hear him talk a bit, but it's audio only, so we can't see him. He has the voice of a leading man. I can see why it might not work in a comedy though, so it was probably better that he stayed a mime. His son, by the way, introduces the clip. His name is Bill Marx.

Project Finished! (Painted My Truck)

Boy do I love it when I’m done with a project that takes me weeks of spare time to do and it actually doesn’t come out horrible. Thus is the case with painting my old Dodge Dakota truck. I inherited this beast when my dad died last year. If you ever see one of these early 90s trucks on the road, you’ll probably notice that half the paint is gone from it. Dodge had some kind of problem with either the paint or the primer for a year or two on Dakotas back then, and it was flaking off in no time.

This truck has 200,000 miles on it. It leaks oil pretty bad too. Obviously I wasn’t going to spend a lot of money on a fancy paintjob for an old truck that I just use as a backup to my newer Ram. I looked around on the idiotnet while contemplating ways to paint it myself as inexpensively as possible and found the answer on YouTube. I found a number of videos that showed guys painting vehicles themselves with a foam roller and Rustoleum oil based enamel paint. This is the same paint they put in spray cans, and you’ll use the spray cans too for hard to get places. The thing with foam rollers is that it puts paint on very smooth. If you take your time and do it right it looks like it’s been sprayed. You could spray the vehicle just as well, but you really need a garage to do that where the wind will be kept out. It also takes longer because you can’t thin the paint when it’s in a spray can, thus it takes longer to dry between coats. I only have a carport, so a foam roller seemed like the way to go. Since at least half the paint was gone from the truck, I put on a quart of white primer first. Then nearly three quarts of white gloss paint (4-coats). I also had some rust holes in one side that I had to fiberglass and putty over, so this took me a while longer than it would have if it had just been a straight-up paintjob.

I just took the tape and newspaper off today. It still needs to be polished, but I think it looks pretty darn good. I took it over to my sister’s house today, and she didn’t even recognize it. I’m not going to clear coat it because it sits out in the sun every day, so the clear coat would flake off or get chalky in just a few years.

You can see my Ram (with the ladders on it) shuddering in the background, wondering if it’s next!

Here’s the video I watched to learn how to do this: