....Or maybe, from a previous but recent, age: "The Japanese Effect".
Once we Blighters named ourselves "workshop of the world" 'cos we were. I grew up in Tyneside in the 50s and 60s, which familiarised me with that workshop but, sadly, also its long decline. A major factor was the British inability to keep up with the innovation of newly-risen foreign industries of the many manufacturing kinds. The Japanese, Koreans and various others emergent after WWII, with a lot of newly-acquired industrial expertise, were able to innovate at a far faster rate than the often moribund British equivalent industries.
Even in the 50s and 60s, there was also the beginnings of the trend in The West to make things down to a price rather than up to a quality, in pursuit of greater sales buoyed up by advertising. The Japanese did both together (ever improving quality but at good prices).
Everything seemed to be affected, from cameras to ships. Woodworking tools seemed to escape the syndrome, perhaps, probably because the Far Eastern emergent industrialising nations had very different and well-established traditions in how they did woodwork, including very different tools from those of The West.
Now we have a similar effect with the rise of China as perhaps the new prime in manufacturing. The once awful cheese metal stuff is fading away to be replaced by very well- designed and engineered stuff, from e-cars to bicycles to .... woodworking tools. There may still be awful and suspiciously cheap stuff being made and flogged by the likes of TEMU but there are also very high quality items for a lot less than European, British and US equivalents. Planes are the obvious example but there are increasingly more, of other tool types.
Some of the traditional Far Eastern tools are also making inroads, replacing the European traditional tools in many sheds. Saws are the prime example perhaps.
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What should be our attitude, as buyers of woodworking tools? Inexpensive and high quality often contends with "political" considerations about the manufacturing nation, which can sometimes be difficult to resolve. But people do. How do you resolve it, when a high quality tool of the type you need appears with "Made in China" on a price tag half that for the LN, LV or Clifton equivalent, for example?
Once we Blighters named ourselves "workshop of the world" 'cos we were. I grew up in Tyneside in the 50s and 60s, which familiarised me with that workshop but, sadly, also its long decline. A major factor was the British inability to keep up with the innovation of newly-risen foreign industries of the many manufacturing kinds. The Japanese, Koreans and various others emergent after WWII, with a lot of newly-acquired industrial expertise, were able to innovate at a far faster rate than the often moribund British equivalent industries.
Even in the 50s and 60s, there was also the beginnings of the trend in The West to make things down to a price rather than up to a quality, in pursuit of greater sales buoyed up by advertising. The Japanese did both together (ever improving quality but at good prices).
Everything seemed to be affected, from cameras to ships. Woodworking tools seemed to escape the syndrome, perhaps, probably because the Far Eastern emergent industrialising nations had very different and well-established traditions in how they did woodwork, including very different tools from those of The West.
Now we have a similar effect with the rise of China as perhaps the new prime in manufacturing. The once awful cheese metal stuff is fading away to be replaced by very well- designed and engineered stuff, from e-cars to bicycles to .... woodworking tools. There may still be awful and suspiciously cheap stuff being made and flogged by the likes of TEMU but there are also very high quality items for a lot less than European, British and US equivalents. Planes are the obvious example but there are increasingly more, of other tool types.
Some of the traditional Far Eastern tools are also making inroads, replacing the European traditional tools in many sheds. Saws are the prime example perhaps.
***********
What should be our attitude, as buyers of woodworking tools? Inexpensive and high quality often contends with "political" considerations about the manufacturing nation, which can sometimes be difficult to resolve. But people do. How do you resolve it, when a high quality tool of the type you need appears with "Made in China" on a price tag half that for the LN, LV or Clifton equivalent, for example?
