I'd rather have one of Edwin Reyes hand fitted cues than almost any CNC or pantagraphed cue made. Wouldn't sweat it if I found something less than perfect either. Nice to see that somebody can set up a CNC machine or trace a CNC made pattern with a pantagraph but it takes a whole 'nuther skill set to take a hand sharpened tool that was once a worn out hack saw blade and cut nice pockets. One skill set can be largely learned from a book, the other only from hard years of experience.
For those that don't know, I own an NC machine and have ran machines with DRO's on them for years, another handy "cheat".
Hu
Well, I own a CNC laser cutter and I can tell you that you ain't learning anything from a book other than how to turn it on and set the power and speed. Everything else is trial and error, on every material you want to cut or engrave.
When you see something that we did that's laser engraved or laser cut then a lot of the time it's a result of many iterations and test pieces, many adjustments, a lot of file preparation and so on.
Some things are just easier to do by hand than they are on the CNC, when you factor in ALL the prep time.
Now when you consider the ability to repeat the work then of course CNC is going to be faster and better. But if you are working on some sort of cue where the pattern and inlay shapes are only going to be used one time then I would argue that doing it with the CNC can take longer than doing it by hand.
Ancient craftsmen who did inlays would often make dies to cut each inlay precisely the same. They would make another die to mark the pocket by tapping it into the wood. Then they would chisel out the pocket and fill it with glue and hand fit the inlay. Some were very good at this and did nice tight work while others were quite sloppy.
So the point is that in today's world there is no shortage of debate over the way something was made. In my shop a lot of the work is done by hand. Hand sewing, hand skiving, hand sanding, gluing, hand guidance using the sewing machine. If you think that it's easy to sew a perfectly straight line over a 30" distance using an industrial sewing machine then be my guest while I watch you screw it up for weeks until you start to get the feel of controlling the machine with your foot and knee while you maintain control of the piece with your hands.
But I don't deliberately allow anything out of my shop that isn't done as well as we can do it. I say as well as we can do it because we are not perfect either and I don't charge enough to throw away the pieces that are not dead nuts perfect. Louis Vuitton charges thousands for their bags. Their stitching is always PERFECT. Every stitch is 100% even and straight, every part is exactly in the right spot where it should be, every part of the bag is true and even. You can spend days in a Louis Vuitton shop looking for a flaw. And you can find them but they are extremely rare because they would have had to make it past dozens of inspections before being allowed onto the sales floor.
If you want to pay me $5000 for a plain jane case then I promise you to make one that is 100% flawless. My shop will be littered with several thousand dollars' worth of half-done pieces that didn't measure up.
In China as all of you know there are boundless amounts of counterfeits. What most of you don't know is that there are levels of counterfeits ranging from very bad to 100% indistinguishable from the real thing. If you know China and you understand all that goes into making a purse then you would know how incredibly hard it is to make a counterfeit bag that can be set beside an original and even the person who made the original would not be able to tell the difference easily. (he would need to tear it apart).
The point being that hand work has plenty of levels and sloppy work is sloppy work no matter whether it's done by hand or done using a computer guided tool. Getting a near flawless piece is a matter of dedication and knowledge and complete mastery of your craft. The tools used don't matter at all.
Al Stohlman started out doing leather decoration with tools he made from whatever was available to him. He did great work. Over the course of his life he designed and created a lot more tools that were mass produced. He then wrote books on how to use to those tools and since then many others have done the same with videos as well. Over the past 50 years we have seen some incredible leather art as a result of people having access to Al's tools (and others that have followed). But the ART part it doesn't come from the tools, it comes from the mind that guides the tools.
Right now some people use the computer to make some fantastic designs and then they tool those designs. Conversely you might have someone who draws a fantastic design freehand but their tooling is horrible.
The resulting product is or should be judged by it's finished state. If you knew nothing of how it was produced how would you feel about it?
I devised a way to use the laser to cut perfectly sharp points. I can cut parts and pockets and make perfectly sharp points using the laser. If I did that would they be any less value than someone who did them by hand? Not in my opinion.
And if we really want to go there then why don't we hold the decal cues in higher regard?
I sat and watched people putting on decal points for 10 minutes one day. These are water slide decals. Same as a lot of us used when we did models as kids, same as upper level hobbyists use to decorate their models today.
But consider this, these decal application workers sit there with the cue and they have literally only a few seconds per decal to get them in place before they start to dry out and break with the slightest touch. They have to do 4-8 of these per cue and get them all evenly spaced and evenly high, and they do it by EYE, nothing to guide them, no marks on the cue, no lines, no registrations. Just over and over and over cue after cue after cue day after day after day.
The people who do this job are very good at it, very steady hands, very quick. This is true handwork in decoration. So why don't decal cues get more "respect"? Especially when they are done right?
I think it boils down to bias. Everyone has their idea of how things "should be done", some people are "purists", some don't care, some are on the fence but everyone has made up their mind based on whatever reasoning they have, mostly without really knowing all that goes into making whatever it is that they are judging.
I can guarantee all of you that if I opened up my shop and showed EVERY step that we go through to make a case that most case makers would shake their heads and say, I ain't doing that.......
But the consumer doesn't know this. They see that someone is a "one-man shop" and grant a pass on the workmanship because it's "hand-made" with no real clue what hand-made even really means or what sort of jigs, templates and machines a person uses in their work.
So it's bias and general ignorance of the process. In some ways that works out to the good for some makers and to the bad for others. At the end of the day every person who is judging any object is guided first by their subjective feelings about it. Most cannot step away from their feelings and expectations and emotional investment to judge it objectively based on the merits.
And perhaps this too is simply part of being human. After all if we didn't invest a little bit of ourselves into the things we desire then why desire them?
