Handcut Hay - Have we reached peak 'hand-made'?

[fuzzalow]

Originally Posted by cash05458

this thread made me chuckle...being from Vermont I see alot of this...tourists come up here thinking they are going to find some rare old piece of furniture in some little shop for a pittance and worth a fortune...or hoping anyhow...and of course the shop owners I know are very wise to what they have and play off it to get more than the item is worth, they will play vermont dumb and get alot more than the thing is worth...and the made in vermont thing, while useful, gets outta hand...you could probably put out a box of "authentic vermont twigs" at a local farmers market and a folks would buy a few to take back to boston...

HaHa! Hard to feel too bad for those that do this type of buying. They should not dabble in things they know little to nothing about so it serves them right.

In fairness, I don't think this crowd we are poking fun at as amateur furniture collectors and appraisers is necessarily the Boston crowd in the sense of the urbane sophisticate or Beacon Hill-types. Because those types know, if not directly about furniture, then at least they know about the patina of good things or the ways of the world and are not so easily fooled.

[redir]

This argument comes up often in my other line of work which is building guitars. Small builders like myself who put out ten guitars a year verses big companies who produce 400/week and yet their label claims they are hand made because some one on the assembly line actually touched it.

Fact is even small builders like myself are not literally hand making guitars. If that were the case then I'd have no need for electricity in my shop. I would hand saw veneers right off the log to use for the top, back, and sides of the guitar. No thanks, I'' just use my hands to run them through a band saw and planner first Granted there is a LOT of 'hand made' that goes into building a guitar in a small shop or even to some extent a factory but the terminology has been greatly exploited.

BTW Hardee's has hand dipped ice cream yum yum yum.

[fuzzalow]

Originally Posted by redir

This argument comes up often in my other line of work which is building guitars. Small builders like myself who put out ten guitars a year verses big companies who produce 400/week and yet their label claims they are hand made because some one on the assembly line actually touched it.

Fact is even small builders like myself are not literally hand making guitars. If that were the case then I'd have no need for electricity in my shop. I would hand saw veneers right off the log to use for the top, back, and sides of the guitar. No thanks, I'' just use my hands to run them through a band saw and planner first Granted there is a LOT of 'hand made' that goes into building a guitar in a small shop or even to some extent a factory but the terminology has been greatly exploited.

BTW Hardee's has hand dipped ice cream yum yum yum.

I build guitars also. Not big bodied Jazz boxes but relatively simple solid body electrics. I build Gibson-type guitars for myself in the manner that Gibson is not capable or no longer interested in building. I disagree somewhat with your suggestion that using power tools detracts from the hand made aspect of guitars. Building guitars is precision work and tuning a Jazz box hollow body requires an ear. I hope one day to build a few big Jazz boxes.

Gibson even during the time from Kalamazoo was an outgrowth of the furniture industry so it was always a production facility. John D'Angelico working out of his Second Avenue shop in NYC is, however, a completely different level of handcrafted artisanship. I suspect your work is along the lines of the latter and not the former.

[redir]

Originally Posted by fuzzalow

I build guitars also. Not big bodied Jazz boxes but relatively simple solid body electrics. I build Gibson-type guitars for myself in the manner that Gibson is not capable or no longer interested in building. I disagree somewhat with your suggestion that using power tools detracts from the hand made aspect of guitars. Building guitars is precision work and tuning a Jazz box hollow body requires an ear. I hope one day to build a few big Jazz boxes.

Gibson even during the time from Kalamazoo was an outgrowth of the furniture industry so it was always a production facility. John D'Angelico working out of his Second Avenue shop in NYC is, however, a completely different level of handcrafted artisanship. I suspect your work is along the lines of the latter and not the former.

I didn't mean to suggest that at all. I have power equipment because while I can do the same thing with a hand plane I can get it done accurately and quickly in less then a tenth of the time. It's still hand made. What I am saying is that when you see the label 'hand made' on something like a Yamaha (still good guitars) then it's an exploitation of the term.

But over on the luthier forums we argue about this all the time

So now I've met yet another bike rider who builds guitars, I swear there are a lot of us out there and seems to be some sort of connection. A D'Angelico would be a prize possession if I could ever afford one. I've built about ten electric guitars and some bass's but mostly build steel string and classical guitars. I've recently built a Selmer guitar and think I am going try and get better at those, they are neat instruments.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by redir

This argument comes up often in my other line of work which is building guitars.

Originally Posted by fuzzalow

I build guitars also.

I've often wondered how John Monteleone must have felt when Mark Knopfler sat him down and played "Monteleone" for him for the first time.

I suppose not unlike a frame-builder might feel when something he's built wins a stage at the TdF.

[Germany_chris]

Originally Posted by Louis

I only have one comment about this particular kerfuffle:

I bet you I could do 100 blind taste tests in a row, all on the same afternoon, and in one every single one I would still prefer the Chimay Blue Label over Budweiser - even on the 99th and 100th tests, when my ability to discern nectar from swill would presumably be significantly degraded.

I could taste the difference 100 times out of a 100 too and I'd pick the Budweiser swill over the Belgian swill any day.

[echelon_john]

Did someone say "authentic Vermont twigs!?"

http://www.yankeemagazine.com/articl...chstix-dog-toy

Originally Posted by cash05458

this thread made me chuckle...being from Vermont I see alot of this...tourists come up here thinking they are going to find some rare old piece of furniture in some little shop for a pittance and worth a fortune...or hoping anyhow...and of course the shop owners I know are very wise to what they have and play off it to get more than the item is worth, they will play vermont dumb and get alot more than the thing is worth...and the made in vermont thing, while useful, gets outta hand...you could probably put out a box of "authentic vermont twigs" at a local farmers market and a folks would buy a few to take back to boston...

[Netdewt]

Originally Posted by Germany_chris

I could taste the difference 100 times out of a 100 too and I'd pick the Budweiser swill over the Belgian swill any day.

The grass is greener? Pun intended?

[Rednivek]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

I pass a farm on one of my rides offering up "Hand cut Hay". Seriously? This is what the world has come to?

People buying hay now care that it was cut using the same technique as Jebediah, circa 1786?

Pretty soon we'll start seeing hand-sawn fire wood.

What's the craziest 'hand made' thing you've seen for sale?

I guess the question for me is what "hand cut" or "hand made" implies. Does it imply better quality (hay isn't as sharp or he hand picked the best plants?) or does it imply that a guy was toiling and earning a living the hard way or does it imply extra care and love or does it imply its locally sourced?

Any of those are appealing to me. Hay or bike part.

[Tim Porter]

Okay, let me call back to my distant youth and "making hay". If you look back at post #43, you see that combine cutting about 20-25 rows of hay at once and then it spits out a neat row of cut hay for the baling machine to come along, scoop it up and create bales of hay that are put on the wagon behind it by sweaty teenagers making 75 cents an hour.

The knock on combines is that they are allegedly the nuclear solution to cutting hay. Every freakin mouse, fox, rabbit, hunting house cat and vole in the field is hoovered up in the process and probably in that nice pile of hay about to be baled.

So let's say our Vermont farmer sees a value instead in hiring 4 more teenagers, teaches them to use a scythe and sends them down those 25 rows to cut the hay. Then he uses his hay rake on his tractor to make rows for the baler and proceeds on his way to making bales. No huge combine to buy and fuel up, four paid teenagers who are happy they have money to buy ice cream for Linda Sue and no dead small mammals.

I can see this scenario being real. May not do it myself if I was in the farm business, but if I didn't have 100s of acres of hay fields, or had rocky New England fields, I'd consider it . . . .

Just trying to make sense of this, y'know. Tim

[Tom]

I dunno... I cut hay with a sickle bar attached to a '52 Ford 8N, made windrows with a Ferguson PTO attached rake, baled it with a New Holland baler and still found plenty of garter snakes in the bales... in Vermont. Any machinery will suck up things.

To quote John Prine:

"Roosters laying chickens,
Chickens laying eggs.
Farm machinery eating people's arms and legs
I ain't hurtin' nobody,
I ain't hurtin' no one"

And to get back closer to topic - west of town there's a hand painted sign:

"Manure for sale
Made fresh daily"

[Ozz]

Originally Posted by pbarry

The scythe is one of the most efficient hand tools ever invented. With one stroke, a sharp scythe will cut 12-18 square feet of grass/hay/weeds. Incredible workout--The original crossfit training device.

Sega jokoa (scything)

Literally "scythe game", this sport is also known as segalariak (scythers), sega proba (scythe test), sega apustua (scythe bet) or segalaritza (scything). The earliest record of this sport comes from a bertso dating back to 1880 about a competition in Iturriotz.

In this sport competitors (called segalari) either compete to cut the most grass in a given space of time (usually one hour) or they are each given plots of grass of the same size and the competition is to see who can scythe theirs the fastest. Today the competition usually lasts one hour but two-hour competitions also are still held. At the end, the grass is raked, weighed and baled to establish the winner. Traditionally, as with most Basque sports, the competitors would make a profit by betting but monetary prizes have been put up since the 1950s.

There are few actual records in this sport as it very much depends on the terrain and is thus difficult to compare. But a number of segalari have achieved fame nonetheless, for example the legendary Pedro Maria Otaño Ezeitza, commonly known as Santa Ageda from Beizama who was also an aizkolari and competed up until 1915. Another famed event was the competition of 1925 in Iturriotz when, before a crowd of 6000, Pedro Mendizabal from Aia and Jose Arrieta from Urnieta battled each other. Legend has it that more than 150,000 pesetas in bets were placed. Mendizabal won, cutting 4294 kg of grass in two hours against his rival's 3957 kg.

The use of scythes is still widespread today as many pastures are to steep for modern farm machinery so scythes are used to cut grass or bracken. Working scythes have blades between 0.9-0.95m long but competition scythes range from 1.18-1.24m in length. A decent segalari can manage some 5000m2 in a day.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by Ozz

Pedro Mendizabal from Aia and Jose Arrieta from Urnieta battled each other. Legend has it that more than 150,000 pesetas in bets were placed. Mendizabal won, cutting 4294 kg of grass in two hours against his rival's 3957 kg.

Well known doper. That result was voided years ago.

[MattTuck]

ha!

the basque country seems like a really interesting place to visit.

[Germany_chris]

Originally Posted by Netdewt

The grass is greener? Pun intended?

Nah I'm just a known hater of Belgian beer but then I don't like Schwäbisch beer either. I like craft American brews, the bulk of UK beers, and Bavarian beer in no particular order. I really wish I could get Bells Oberon over here Germans don't do light fruity beer like that.