Isn't it strange how we all admire hand work that is so good it looks like the machine made stuff that we are trying to avoid in the first place ?
Pete,
That's a question that came to my mind over 35 years ago. However it is a question that could only be raised by people who were raised in an electrified machine age. Grin. Please allow my poor attempt to explain.
It doesn't matter if something is made entirely by hand, or by the combination of hand and simple (human powered) machines or completely by a computer operated machine; it is our eyes, brain and "sense of order" we have that tells us if something is esthetically pleasing. A machine can make ten, a hundred, a thousand or even a million or more parts to almost exactly the same size, but it can not tell if the part will "look good" on a rifle, shooting pouch, knife, etc., etc.. IOW, a machine leaves out the factor of individual taste and forces us to settle for what we like best out of what is offered, rather than what we would like to have and what looks good to our individual taste.
To illustrate my point, I would like to use two things from the basic time period of the ALR. The first is the ALR itself in that there were so many "schools' or variations of the ALR going on at the same time period. Obviously, the gunsmiths in each school felt they were making the best looking rifle and generally made them in the same style for each school, though to the customer's order and at least some of his specifications. A customer who would have had access to more than one "school" of gunsmiths would have figured out which one he liked best.
The other and maybe better example is shoes made by a real cordwainer vs a shoemaker or a cobbler vs machine made shoes. A cordwainer made/makes shoes that are esthetically pleasing PLUS are made to better fit the individuals foot and made with great style (whatever the style in fashion or for what purpose.) A shoemaker or cobbler made shoes that basically fit the individuals foot, but generally were not finished as pleasing to the eye. A machine can make a pleasing shoe (if someone designs the shoe in the first place to copy), but it can not properly fit the shoe to the person. Even though machines can make many sizes of shoes in far greater numbers, they don't really fit the individual as you have to find the shoe size that comes closest to your foot and accept that - rather than have a shoe made for your feet. The Cordwainer at Williamsburg told me in the 80's that they made many pairs of shoes for folks who had foot problems and had to have special orthopedic shoes made, BUT after using handmade shoes, they did not need the orthopedic shoes and the handmade shoes felt and worked much better for them. The Cordwainer also showed me things about the construction of the shoes that could not be readily replicated by a machine. Finally, a machine does not do the same kind of stitching that is done by hand is is actually inferior to a hand sewn stitch in two ways.
I suggest we start from the basic time period when the "best quality" leather work and hand stitching looked extremely uniform and pleasing to the eye. A machine could replicate an extremely uniform stitch over straight areas, but many machines still won't make a good looking stitch around compound corners or various shapes. So what they did and still do is to change the shape or construction of something so the machine could sew it properly and the stitches look good. (This is what happens in machine made vs hand made shoes by a Cordwainer.)
The other important thing is that while machine sewn leather stitches are very uniform, they won't wear as long as hand sewn stitches. Allow me to illustrate that using two links. The first link shows how a modern sewing machine sews even the "best" stitch known as a lock stitch:
http://home.howstuffworks.com/sewing-machine1.htmThe second link by our own Chuck Burrows shows an illustration by Al Stohlman on how the hand sewn stitch will not come apart as easily as the machine sewn lock stitch, when a stitch is broken:
http://www.knifenetwork.com/workshop/tut_wrtc_burrows.shtmlI didn't know this when I first began hand sewing leather in the 1970's. However, to gain experience in hand sewing, I repaired a LOT of leather gun belts then in use by Police Officers. The stitching on the belts I had repaired came unstrung exactly as Al Stohlman illustrated and in the areas of the highest stress or abrasion of the stitches. I only got two police gun belts back after I had repaired them, but it was not for the areas I had hand sewn, it was in different areas that had been machine sewn. When I first visited the Cordwainer's shop in Colonial Williamsburg and he talked about how hand sewn stitches were stronger and lasted longer than machine sewn, the police belts came to mind. Now, any real saddler or leather working professional knew that then, but I didn't apprentice under a saddler or cordwainer, so I didn't realize it until after I had been told by the Cordwainer. In our modern age, we are used to things not fitting as well or wearing out faster thanks to many things made by machines that aren't as well made, but last "long enough" and are "cheap enough" they do the job.
Now before any real machinists reading this want to tar and feather me and thrust me on a rail to run me out of town, I also must give them their due. It is just not possible or economical to do so many things by hand and to such precision measurements if we didn't have machines. We would never have gone to space, won great wars, or have the standard of living we have in this country without machines and ESPECIALLY without REAL machinists. We still need real machinists to ensure the machines are making stuff correctly and to design and operate machines correctly. Anyone involved with Computer Assisted Machining techniques should have plenty of experiences where there were real problems that had or have to be fixed "by hand." As we go to ever more use of CAM machines, we are losing much of the ART and experience that REAL machinists perform.
