Manufactured vs handmade (What two little boys taught me)

I don’t know how many people are aware of the little fact

that on weekends I set up a little table in town to make a
few sales and socialize a bit. Most of the time it is more an
excuse to get out of the house for a few hours than an attempt
at selling anything. Sometimes it can be just a quiet boring
day and sometimes it can be a busy profitable one. I’ll admit
that there are times when dealing the public can drive me batty,
there’s always someone that thinks haggling is the fine art of giving
an insult in the attempt to get a better deal. And it also gives
me a chance to see how a lot of people see the world around them.

One Saturday morning a few weeks ago I had my table set
up and was relaxing in my beat up old camper’s chair when
a pair of little boys rolled up on their bikes. We chatted and they
asked questions about the knives and other little oddities I keep
on the table. One of them asked how much for this one little knife…

The look on their faces when I told them fifteen dollars was
both funny and a little irksome. I made it so I know how much
work was involved. They didn’t. That was when it occurred to
me why so many people never do understand why a hand crafted
item cost so much more than the stuff they pick up at Wal-Mart
or some other modern store.

People have gotten used to paying a much smaller price for
their goods without realizing why those goods cost so relatively
little. In a manufacturing plant the items are produced by mass
production, and all of them look and feel pretty much the same.
Hand made items can only be created one at a time and while
you may be able to make two similar items they will still both
be utterly unique.

The other thing is quality, there are high quality mass produced
items but there is also a lot of mass produced junk floating around
the market place as well. I won’t say that there aren’t poorly made
hand made items, there are. When I first started learning to make
knives I made a few stinkers but they are things I keep to remind
myself how to not make a knife. On occasion I’ll still screw one up
but those don’t leave my shop unless it is going to end up being used
to weed the garden.

But I digress…

Most hand crafted items are usually higher quality than a lot of
factory made items. Which is usually better, an apple pie fresh
out of the store freezer or one that was fresh made by a good cook?
(betcha never thought of an apple pie as hand crafted before! lol)

At any rate, my point is that with mass produced items, the
people making them don’t really care that much about an
individual item on the production line, One of humpteen thousand
usually. With a hand made item, the person making it takes
greater care with each item made and more actual time in making it.