Thread: An Observation on quality control

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

You have to remember the custom makers of today can't be compared to a highly trained worker of the past. Now take a custom maker from the 1800s and compare THAT to a modern custom maker and I think you may change your mind.

im not sure what you are saying here, in either case.

I think Jamie is right, The knives that were being made in the early 1980s were mostly carbon steel and stainless was not well known. 440c steel was a fairly new thing to knife making as was steelite6k,154cm and such. Just being tried, and now we have many steels and cryo tempering is common, as well as many many handle materials and different pins, Square wheel, Baldor grinders and such. Much more to choose from for razors and knives. Much better heat treating processes. It was all pretty basic back then, not to mention the turn of the century and before. Razor makers now have so much to work with and better methods. They could do much more than they do and I think in the future, the way straights are becoming popular, we will see incredible razors from not just custom makers but the major companies like Dovo as well. Look what the custom knife makers have done for knife designs and already the hone companies have jumped on the razor bandwagon.

Out Sourcing. The company that made the blade didn't make the whole razor. It component parts were made by various companies and just put together. In European countries it was common up to WWII that small manufactured items were assembled all over the place. Look at Spain and Guernica. The whole town was destroyed because Arms making was a 'cottage industry'.

If I may speak on behalf of the TBS,
the attempted comparison between a historical factory worker who worked on one step out of many for a razors manufacture (working under production quotas in a large factory) and a modern day "one-man" razor manufacturer that produces and oversees everything from raw materials through to the final product is like comparing apples and oranges. If you were to look at historical industries (such as silverware for example) where an individual craftsman worked on items from start to finish, often leaving their initials on their work, to craftsmen of today who work on similar items, I don´t think the skills, techniques and levels of quality control of today would compare very favourably with that of days past. Certainly prices for such historical items reflect this.

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