Why do people say "handmade"?

[fredk]

25 minutes ago, Rahere said:

One major factor for the English lead in the Industrial revolution was the Armada. Queen Elizabeth 1 had become convinced the previous practice of conscripting trading ships was no longer feasible, and had seen for herself the problems of designs like the Vasa and Mary Rose. Prompted by privateers, she opted for smaller, faster ships, and started producing them in number. 

1. the Vasa was built in 1623,  about 20 years after Lizzy 1 died

2. Standardisation and mass production of naval ships types did not come till the true Royal Navy under Charles II, 1660 to 1685. Lizzy still held to 'hiring' the private ships, then refused to pay them. She seized the Ark Rawleigh from Walter Rawleigh as she thought it was too powerful a ship for a privateer. She renamed it Ark Royal

Edited June 13, 2021 by fredk

[Rahere]

1 hour ago, fredk said:

1. the Vasa was built in 1623,  about 20 years after Lizzy 1 died

2. Standardisation and mass production of naval ships types did not come till the true Royal Navy under Charles II, 1660 to 1685. Lizzy still held to 'hiring' the private ships, then refused to pay them. She seized the Ark Rawleigh from Walter Rawleigh as she thought it was too powerful a ship for a privateer. She renamed it Ark Royal

This is really a question of a progression of thinking. Yes in the complete standardisation of type, greatly inspired by the Dutch frigate "yacht/hunter" design, no in that it wasn't a sudden inspiration, but something which had been going on for a century. One might even argue that the standard forms of infantry weapons takes the thinking back a hundred years or more before that.

You're talking about Samuel Pepys' work, but he followed on the heels of Phineas Pett (1570-1649), who built the Navy which fought the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th Century at Deptford (which Henry VIII founded in 1513) and Chatham (c1550), clearing a small forest east of Woolwich. I was raised in what remains of it, Petts Wood. It's an accident of history that Cornelis van Tromp's House of Orange then followed the Stuarts! Most of the Napoleonic Navy was built either at Chatham or at Bucklers Hard, on the edge of the New Forest, in a shipyard started in around 1700, but to say we had no navy before then is bemusing. My family got mixed up in that from about 1760, we've generations of naval engineers: my schoolmates were astonished to find my immediate integration in the RN while on attachment, with the family nickname instantly applied. Many officers knew my grandpa, Officers Mess CPO Steward, and almost all my uncle, who did most of the torpedo fitting and tuning in Pompey between 1930 and 1970.

Elizabeth was constrained in her official expenditure, so encouraged privateer action to force the Spanish to pay for it, in letters patent (the birth of the Patent system of intellectual copyright). The Ordnance Board supplied most if not all of the weapons, which were a State monopoly by then: the Tudors rise was not to inspire rivals!  That's how she could legally move against Raleigh. The system still is used, as seen in the conscription of the Atlantic Conveyor and QE2 in the Falklands War: the State had a claim.

Either way, it still demonstrates a huge technological lead in mass production.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Rahere

[Handstitched]

21 hours ago, Spyros said:

Nothing good comes to mind, I keep thinking of MILF for some reason

O'h dear, great minds think alike . 

When my customers ask where my belts are made,( even though my sign says where)  I tell them  where and  by me, then I show them my hands, covered in dye to prove they're hand crafted . I don't use gloves, .  But thats another story for another thread . 

' Hand crafted', now theres a term I haven't seen come up in this discussion, unless I missed it.  

HS

Edited June 13, 2021 by Handstitched

[Tugadude]

I am active on a bicycle forum and I noticed this photo today.  

 

Craftsman built is a new one on me.  By the way, I own a vintage Raleigh and also a Carlton, which was constructed in the Worksop factory.  Both are very nice.

[chuck123wapati]

1 hour ago, Tugadude said:

I am active on a bicycle forum and I noticed this photo today.  

 

Craftsman built is a new one on me.  By the way, I own a vintage Raleigh and also a Carlton, which was constructed in the Worksop factory.  Both are very nice.

little off topic but what do you know about shimanoo sti 600 brifters?  it seems they aren't very good but i have a couple to fix.

[Rahere]

Oh, here we go.Patents were originally enterprise initiatives in the face of the craft guilds which had appeared after the Black Death freed skilled workers from feudal serfdom in Free Towns across Europe. They took likely pupils on as apprentices to learn the basics, before sending them out as journeymen, travelling as a kind of pilgrim between hostels, sharing ideas as they went, before returning home ready to demonstrate their competence with a masterpiece. There's a Musée de Compagnage in the French city of Tours dedicated to this: it's where the idea of the original Tour de France came from, long before cycling hijacked it. The craft guilds became excessively powerful, stopping newcomers from getting established, and so letters patent gave some years of Royal protection.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Rahere

[Tugadude]

5 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

little off topic but what do you know about shimanoo sti 600 brifters?  it seems they aren't very good but i have a couple to fix.

Shimano 600 is the 2nd tier from the top, Dura Ace, and was later named Ultegra.  They are quality shifters.  If they are sluggish, before opening them up, squirt some lubricating oil into them and move the shifters.  They might just have gummy residue in them.  Otherwise they can be repaired, but it is quite difficult from what I hear.  They aren’t designed to be serviceable.

[chuck123wapati]

12 minutes ago, Tugadude said:

Shimano 600 is the 2nd tier from the top, Dura Ace, and was later named Ultegra.  They are quality shifters.  If they are sluggish, before opening them up, squirt some lubricating oil into them and move the shifters.  They might just have gummy residue in them.  Otherwise they can be repaired, but it is quite difficult from what I hear.  They aren’t designed to be serviceable.

Thank you! lol it took less than an hour to get them both working, I used brake cleaner  then air then some pb blaster over and over about 6 times while working them. I figure if i can rebuild a holley double pumper then i could manage these but didn't have to. They work like new now. i read they were hard to service and about a dozen posts suggesting wd 40 might work or one guy in the whole US who can repair them lol. you can check out my $8.47 bike in the all about us section and off topic if you like. 

Edited June 13, 2021 by chuck123wapati

[Handstitched]

8 hours ago, Rahere said:

The craft guilds became excessively powerful, stopping newcomers from getting established, and so letters patent gave some years of Royal protection.

Thats exactly right. This is a little off topic too, but theres a  really good reference  to guilds in the movie " Jabawocky" , in a scene with " Wat Dabney & Dennis Cooper "  where Dennis wanted to get a job coopering where a guild sign was displayed  .  Roughly, Wat Dabney's line : " To get a job there you must be part of a guild, you're not, and I'm not" . Dennis: " Thats not fair "  WD: Fair or not,  the guilds have the town sewn up"...etc .

Needless to say Wat Dabney, ( the inventor of the inverted firkin)  cut his foot off to make some money,  because he couldn't get a job  coopering, damn funny  

The movie was very much historically accurate too. 

HS

[Rahere]

7 hours ago, Handstitched said:

Thats exactly right. This is a little off topic too, but theres a  really good reference  to guilds in the movie " Jabawocky" , in a scene with " Wat Dabney & Dennis Cooper "  where Dennis wanted to get a job coopering where a guild sign was displayed  .  Roughly, Wat Dabney's line : " To get a job there you must be part of a guild, you're not, and I'm not" . Dennis: " Thats not fair "  WD: Fair or not,  the guilds have the town sewn up"...etc .

Needless to say Wat Dabney, ( the inventor of the inverted firkin)  cut his foot off to make some money,  because he couldn't get a job  coopering, damn funny  

The movie was very much historically accurate too. 

HS

It's actually at the root of modern issues with Freemasonry, that we lurched from feudal to industrial serfdom with very little change at the bottom - or at the top, for that matter. It misrepresents them now, although they do have some élitist tendencies. To put the Commies back in their box, there's nothing wrong with that, if it's based on delivery: sadly the social élite don't deliver, mostly. Right, boxes closed, let's get on.