2009-01-07 18:05:51.697872+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments
Fascinating: Stanwood craftsman puts human touch on factory-made pianos, Darrell Fandrich takes mass produced pianos from China, guts them, and rebuilds them with more attention to detail, selling them for quite a bit less than the completely custom built pianos.
There was recently a thread over at Lumberjocks about how finished projects were worth less than the raw lumber. I think these two notions are tied together.
[ related topics: Fabrication Economics Woodworking ]
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#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-07 19:18:49.464745+00 by: m
One of the comments at lumberjacks mentioned that it was also true for fabric goods.
This is also generally true for precious and semiprecious stones as well. The rough from which gems are cut is often more expensive than a finished stone from outside the country. It doesn't take very much expertise to facet a stone, except for diamonds (because of hardness and cost), or the material is particularly problematic. It is a field in which amateurs nearly always produce results that are vastly superior to the work of professional commercial cutters except at the very top end, and again excluding diamonds.