• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

My World: One more from the shoemakers workshop

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Antonio, Maggie, Doug,

Thanks.

People tend to look down on the simple tools, though these ease life as much and often more than the more sophisticated tools. A sophisticated sewing machine running Windows CE with loads of special stitching programs is just overdone when the task is simply stitching on a button...

Best regards,
Michael
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
... People tend to look down on the simple tools, though these ease life as much and often more than the more sophisticated tools. A sophisticated sewing machine running Windows CE with loads of special stitching programs is just overdone when the task is simply stitching on a button... Michael

Absolutely Michael !

This is what I have been trying to do with my collections of workers. I mean trying not doing it :)
In Setúbal, some years ago, there was some old people working with simple tools and that work would have been very interesting to photograph. I still remember some when I was a young boy.
However, there still exist a couple of them.
It is true that I have not been having the right interest for those professions/jobs but I hope I remember your post and make some photographs late this year.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sorry for a long rant, but the picture resonates!

A simple tool, but every tool is important.






Michael,

Not only are such simple tools so important and the great skill that goes with them is precious and as Antonio points out, getting exceedingly rare.

Machines that mass-produce objects have been replacing craftsman for the last 150 years and with that we lose the techniques that took millennia to develop and be inherited and perfected from generation to generation. So our population is left bereft of these hard won skills. As a result we often cannot repair things.

This leads to far reaching consequences. It creates a mindset of disposability. As a student, everyone knew the shoe repairman. We depended on him for our shoes getting new soles and heeled and for stitching our worn out leather satchel! Someone fortunate to have a car had the vehicle lovingly repaired and kept on the road, just like the American veteran cars left in Cuba since the revolution. By necessity they are repaired! Here in the USA, folk care for their older cars less and less. When there's trouble, we often just trade the car in for something gleaming and new.

What shocked me though was when my 80,000 Kilovolt Picker radiation therapy machine broke, all the service centers refuse to touch it ,as it was "ancient" from the 1960's! So I had the glass radiation-producing tube replaced myself and then had a tiny fan motor reverse engineered and the machine came back to life, treating many cancer patients with perfect results! The attitude has developed and become reflex and so obvious: that everything is replaceable!

So this seems to apply to in personal relationships too. I'd wager that the 65% or more breakdown in marriage is also related to the pervasive attitude of constant "upgrading" instead of working around problems.

So, Michael, your appreciation of the craftsman skills and simple tools is so significant. We all should support local craftsman whenever we can as these are precious parts of our heritage that need to be protected from extinction.

Asher
 
Top