Wednesday, February 6, 2008

What is "Handmade"?

Power tools are getting so advanced with their lasers and electronics that I wanted to talk a bit about what I mean when I say something is handmade. You could go to one extreme and say that only things like pottery that are literally made by hand are handmade. On the other extreme, there are computer-driven routers that do all of the shaping. That's not handmade, in my book anyway. There's got to be a middle ground. I think of something as being handmade when it is made by the skill of someone's hand. If a human hand maneuvers the tool, whether it be a power tool or a tool that doesn't sacrifice a single electron, then whatever it makes is handmade. There -- I said it. Now we can all sleep better.

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