I am still highly inspired and encouraged by my visit to Veritas. So much so that the outcome will be far reaching for those who are striving for perfection in their work. At Veritas, in my conversations, they were keen to give results in their work that eliminated unnecessary risk yet still gave freedom to the new owner to develop essential skill that produced results according to their desire. In other words, the plane or tool they make doesn’t merely guarantee results by controlling the tool as with routers and tablesaws and such.You still set the tool, sharpen the edges, guide it in the cut, provide all of the energy and make minute by minute decisions that demand skill building. In other words, again, you are doing it!
I was amazed at their consciousness to deliver tools that were accurately made and precise to task so as to equip the user, which is you and me. They care in their production and also in the ethos to provide crafting artisans of every background and age with great tools and equipment. Think about it. Did Stanley and Record or Irwin upgrade their products over the time they were in business? What about the German-made Kuntz, Indian-made Anant, Acorn, Keen Kutter, Disston and many more? They didn’t. They reached a point where they levelled off and never improved because of one reason. They cared little about their customer.
2 Comments
Absolutely no doubt that the innovators of their time set the course of history and progressed a plane to oust all others eventually. My question is more whether they continued innovating to improve their products by improving engineering standards and quality and the answer in the last 70 years is absolutely no, although in the pre takeover days by US companies Record Marples did attempt to improve for a very short season, but actually failed. In all of the Stanleys I have held and used since the 1920s the standards of engineering were merely adequate but consistently low in quality because there was no competition. Their planes were never actually high at all and so Tom Nielsen found his niche in producing higher-end Stanley replicas.
Yes – After 50 or so years in the business making hand tools demand collapsed in the Depression and yes Stanley stopped making a lot of their tools. The Stanley innovations for the Post war period were in other areas of tools where there was demand: Tape measure, power tools, things like that. Also Stanley figured out how to make extremely good hand tools in the pre-war period in quantities that vastly exceed modern production by orders of magnitude. And incidentally with the exception of a nice thick blade I use stock bedrocks and I would not trade the performance of them for any modern maker. The problem now is that a lot of the older tools people are comparing are just worn out. 60 or 70 years will do that to you.
LV is an innovative company that makes good stuff. No argument there but it’s not necessary to try to make the comparison with a bunch of giant companies that used to be good but left the market when it became too small to interest them anymore.
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Absolutely no doubt that the innovators of their time set the course of history and progressed a plane to oust all others eventually. My question is more whether they continued innovating to improve their products by improving engineering standards and quality and the answer in the last 70 years is absolutely no, although in the pre takeover days by US companies Record Marples did attempt to improve for a very short season, but actually failed. In all of the Stanleys I have held and used since the 1920s the standards of engineering were merely adequate but consistently low in quality because there was no competition. Their planes were never actually high at all and so Tom Nielsen found his niche in producing higher-end Stanley replicas.
Yes – After 50 or so years in the business making hand tools demand collapsed in the Depression and yes Stanley stopped making a lot of their tools. The Stanley innovations for the Post war period were in other areas of tools where there was demand: Tape measure, power tools, things like that. Also Stanley figured out how to make extremely good hand tools in the pre-war period in quantities that vastly exceed modern production by orders of magnitude. And incidentally with the exception of a nice thick blade I use stock bedrocks and I would not trade the performance of them for any modern maker. The problem now is that a lot of the older tools people are comparing are just worn out. 60 or 70 years will do that to you.
LV is an innovative company that makes good stuff. No argument there but it’s not necessary to try to make the comparison with a bunch of giant companies that used to be good but left the market when it became too small to interest them anymore.