I thought I'd start a thread that's 50% personal observation and 50% starting point for discussion.
It concerns repair & restoration, but in the consumer sense not a technical one, so I thought it belonged here. (mods please relocate if I guessed wrong)
In the pipe repair world, for reasons lost to history, the output of repair shops is viewed as a consumer commodity in the same way as tires, toasters, or cameras. When buying those items, the only difference is who sells them to you and for how much. The quality of the same make & model item is the same at all retail outlets.
In the artisan pipe making world, though, the output of carvers is unique, and each piece is considered individually and priced accordingly.
While the second case is fitting and economically sustainable, the first is not.
There are several reasons why carvers outnumber repairmen by fifty (or more) to one in our hobby, among them being the equipment and inventory requirements. While a carver needs only what's required to create pipes that fulfill a chosen aesthetic, a full-service repairman needs the tools and materials to replicate the work of ALL carvers and brands, both new and old (some go back a century or more), and in every style.
Another reason is the stress of working on someone else's property. It is enormous. There are no "do-overs". Tossing a project into the fireplace when a fatal mistake is made is not an option.
But the main reason is the commodity pricing structure, especially when it comes to replacement stems. No matter the quality or price of the original pipe, there's an expectation that a new stem for it should cost a fixed, nominal amount.
What pipe repairmen do however, is not the same as being a retailer of tires, toasters, or cameras. They sell labor, not merchandise.
In fact, it's not even equivalent labor. Most pipe makers agree that the stem takes as much time to fabricate---sometimes more---than the rest of the pipe. Add to that the second time around, after the stummel is complete and its shape cannot be further modified requires a stem to be made "in a vacuum" to fit that stummel exactly. That is more labor intensive still. Then, often, the labor/time demand is increased yet again by requiring the replacement to exactly match the original. (The original maker didn't have to follow any pattern or meet any particular set of dimensions... whatever simply "looked right" to them became the finished product.)
For the record, and to be 100% clear, I am emphatically NOT criticizing or trying to minimize what "whole" pipe makers do in any way---being truly good at it is insanely difficult and requires having ALL of MANY uncommon skills rolled into a single person. I know any number of them personally, and respect what they do---and am occasionally in awe of what they do---more every day. That their work and business model is more linear and streamlined isn't something they are responsible for creating, it's simply how things are.
It's the combination of those three main things---high financial barrier to entry, working on other people's property, and laborious nature of matching the work of others as opposed to creating it in the first place---that keeps people from entering the repair field (or staying with it for long when they do).
Entire articles have been written about this situation before by highly qualified people, btw. Here's a good one:
http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-deadly-trap-of-pipe-repair.html
So, what's my point with all this? It is to take a swing at raising awareness, and thereby, eventually, make the specialty field of pipe repair more attractive to newcomers by encouraging them to adopt a tradesman model of business instead of a fixed-price commodity one. In short, price their work according to time spent instead of by simplified task categories. That's how it has always been for other tradesmen, from plumbers to machinists to welders. Try getting a fixed-price/categorical quote from one of those guys for clearing a blocked drain, machining an antique motorcycle engine part from billet, or repairing a cracked flange on an oil pipeline. Their pricing is, and has always been, based on labor and (when applicable) materials.
I think that such an approach would not only help to attract more repairmen, but, over the long term, would benefit their customers. First, since there would be more of them, turnaround times would improve. Second, because the quality of EVERYTHING in life varies, workmanship included, after a while skill would correspond with cost. Demand would make it so.
Why would that correspondence be a Good Thing when shopping? Consider the following sets of photos. The price paid by the customer was the same for both stems shown in each pair. The lesser quality ones were the result of someone thinking that since all replacement stems cost essentially the same, he might as well go with the closest shop geographically to save on shipping time and postage. Had their maker not been able to hide in the level-pricing-across-the-trade bushes, the customer might have been curious why shops charged different rates, done some digging, and been spared having to buy a second set of replacement stems before he was satisfied.
Your thoughts?
It concerns repair & restoration, but in the consumer sense not a technical one, so I thought it belonged here. (mods please relocate if I guessed wrong)
In the pipe repair world, for reasons lost to history, the output of repair shops is viewed as a consumer commodity in the same way as tires, toasters, or cameras. When buying those items, the only difference is who sells them to you and for how much. The quality of the same make & model item is the same at all retail outlets.
In the artisan pipe making world, though, the output of carvers is unique, and each piece is considered individually and priced accordingly.
While the second case is fitting and economically sustainable, the first is not.
There are several reasons why carvers outnumber repairmen by fifty (or more) to one in our hobby, among them being the equipment and inventory requirements. While a carver needs only what's required to create pipes that fulfill a chosen aesthetic, a full-service repairman needs the tools and materials to replicate the work of ALL carvers and brands, both new and old (some go back a century or more), and in every style.
Another reason is the stress of working on someone else's property. It is enormous. There are no "do-overs". Tossing a project into the fireplace when a fatal mistake is made is not an option.
But the main reason is the commodity pricing structure, especially when it comes to replacement stems. No matter the quality or price of the original pipe, there's an expectation that a new stem for it should cost a fixed, nominal amount.
What pipe repairmen do however, is not the same as being a retailer of tires, toasters, or cameras. They sell labor, not merchandise.
In fact, it's not even equivalent labor. Most pipe makers agree that the stem takes as much time to fabricate---sometimes more---than the rest of the pipe. Add to that the second time around, after the stummel is complete and its shape cannot be further modified requires a stem to be made "in a vacuum" to fit that stummel exactly. That is more labor intensive still. Then, often, the labor/time demand is increased yet again by requiring the replacement to exactly match the original. (The original maker didn't have to follow any pattern or meet any particular set of dimensions... whatever simply "looked right" to them became the finished product.)
For the record, and to be 100% clear, I am emphatically NOT criticizing or trying to minimize what "whole" pipe makers do in any way---being truly good at it is insanely difficult and requires having ALL of MANY uncommon skills rolled into a single person. I know any number of them personally, and respect what they do---and am occasionally in awe of what they do---more every day. That their work and business model is more linear and streamlined isn't something they are responsible for creating, it's simply how things are.
It's the combination of those three main things---high financial barrier to entry, working on other people's property, and laborious nature of matching the work of others as opposed to creating it in the first place---that keeps people from entering the repair field (or staying with it for long when they do).
Entire articles have been written about this situation before by highly qualified people, btw. Here's a good one:
http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-deadly-trap-of-pipe-repair.html
So, what's my point with all this? It is to take a swing at raising awareness, and thereby, eventually, make the specialty field of pipe repair more attractive to newcomers by encouraging them to adopt a tradesman model of business instead of a fixed-price commodity one. In short, price their work according to time spent instead of by simplified task categories. That's how it has always been for other tradesmen, from plumbers to machinists to welders. Try getting a fixed-price/categorical quote from one of those guys for clearing a blocked drain, machining an antique motorcycle engine part from billet, or repairing a cracked flange on an oil pipeline. Their pricing is, and has always been, based on labor and (when applicable) materials.
I think that such an approach would not only help to attract more repairmen, but, over the long term, would benefit their customers. First, since there would be more of them, turnaround times would improve. Second, because the quality of EVERYTHING in life varies, workmanship included, after a while skill would correspond with cost. Demand would make it so.
Why would that correspondence be a Good Thing when shopping? Consider the following sets of photos. The price paid by the customer was the same for both stems shown in each pair. The lesser quality ones were the result of someone thinking that since all replacement stems cost essentially the same, he might as well go with the closest shop geographically to save on shipping time and postage. Had their maker not been able to hide in the level-pricing-across-the-trade bushes, the customer might have been curious why shops charged different rates, done some digging, and been spared having to buy a second set of replacement stems before he was satisfied.
Your thoughts?
