Are All Our Heritage Industries being Outsourced now

Talking of lost skills, a washing machine repair man came out yesterday to look at my 3 year old Bosch. He did the most utterly basic untrained look at it and said yeah it's broken and can't be fixed. Then said we can take away the old one and fit a new washing machine for £825 plus VAT. It was at this point I realised that they are just a scamming company who cant actually fix anything. They are just trying to sell new machines to people for a nice round grand. Didn't even say what sort of machine it was so no doubt it would be some real rubbish.

He might be right.

Since the 1920's there's been a trend towards making stuff that can't be fixed, or at least not easily. Started with light-bulbs and razors, but has since gone much further. If the bearing in a car engine water-pump fails, it's unlikely the bearing will fixed. A new pump is fitted instead.

Washing machines have gone the same way - spares are expensive and difficult to fit. Seems machines are designed with no consideration for maintenance men.

Dave

But isn't it our fault for expecting the best possible material lifestyle for the lowest possible cost.

How many people have price as the principle decision point when buying "stuff". So to sell the highest possible volume, the manufacturers build down to a price. So products are designed to be manufactured efficiently rather than designed to be repaired.

Add to that the labour costs of service engineers. I would be surprised if you got much change out of £60/hour once you add in the cost of the van/workshop, tools and business overheads (call centre, billing systems, the time consumed looking at jobs that don't materialise, and any return calls) and of course the VAT.

Put those two together and it becomes very difficult for the average person to justify paying for for or five hours labour to dismantle, repair and reassemble a gadget that can be replaced for <£500 but which then has higher efficiency and a warranty.

I fixed our old (25 year old Bosch) washer a couple of years ago. £50 of bearings and seals plus four or five hours work. Would I have had someone else do it at £60/hour plus parts i.e. £350. Another example is clock repair. These days if you want a mechanical clock fixed by someone competent it will cost you £300 for a simple time only clock and north of £1000 for a three train carriage clock. One reason I bought a lathe and started doing my own!

20+ years ago cheap stuff was poor quality. These days with modern CAM and robotic assembly the quality of even cheap is pretty good. So who is to blame "them" for doing away with heritage skills or us for not being willing to pay for them.

How many here buy their suits from Saville Row? Who would buy a new Myford rather than a Warco WM 290V at half the price. Who would go to a bespoke cabinet maker rather than IKEA.

If the market doesn't value and won't pay for something, it goes obsolete!

It's not impossible to get meaningful apprenticeship schemes started. I played a part in getting the bookbinding apprenticeship scheme off the ground at the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, after I made a direct appeal to the then Prince of Wales.

I pointed out that there was a serious shortage of people with the necessary skills to repair, restore or recreate antiquarian bindings sensitively and competently, and that if places like the Royal Library were serious about conserving their collections in the long term they might consider investing more in keeping alive the skills needed to do so.

I got a very positive response as well an admission that they had not been aware these skills were now such a rarity. The emergence of the apprenticeship scheme means they clearly took my letter seriously.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 10/08/2023 19:04:17

Peter, the 60/hour cost that you mentioned is probably a bit shy of the real costs, my granddaughter was recently quoted £220 per hour for repairing a BMW at a main agents. Dave W

I was brought up with the mantra that if something broke, first you took it apart to find out why, second you tried to repair the part that was broken, third you purchased a replacement part if stage 2 didn’t work or the ubiquitous Araldite wasn’t sufficient and then step four in extremis was to dismantle the object removing all ‘useful’ fixtures, flat sheet and anything else before consigning to the bin and purchasing a new one.

I appreciate that modern systems don’t lend themselves to this methodology but equally there is far more information available to explain what might be wrong and how to fix it and a larger pool of potential spares.

I personally take pride in keeping household technology running – our 15 year old dishwasher started to leak and it took the best part of a morning to totally dismantle to access and clean the main seal, coat with plumbing grade silicone and reassemble it. However, a) it doesn’t head for landfill, b) I don’t have to replace it with something no better, potentially built further down to a price and c) It gives me great satisfaction.

I admire others like Peter Cook6 for following the same route and encourage those who call the repair man to do a basic analysis themselves, saving callout and potential scams.

Simon

I find the Repair Shop a fascinating case study. I really enjoy the programme, but often wonder how many of the "treasured items" would get restored if the owners were faced with the commercial costs of doing so.

Dave W I think luxury car main agents labour rates are, in the main, over the top. But on the other hand they cover a lot of overheads. My Merc main dealer provides a "free" loan car while mine is being serviced - and I am happy to pay their inflated rates for the convenience and service offered.

Simon I must confess reason c) is my main motivator! however the. skills are lacking in many people. I know people locally who "call a man" when they want a picture hanging!

Edited By Peter Cook 6 on 10/08/2023 21:10:59

I do try to fix everything that fails in the home, I don't always succeed but I do try and have had some good results over the years. Someone must have grassed me up because I keep getting asked to 'look' at things ranging from the village community bus's side-door release mechanism to a local farmer's shotgun. I succeeded in fixing both, not a good idea really because it led to further requests for help, (can you just have a quick look at my lawnmower and have you got something that might fit this, please?) and that's before I mention SWMBO who brings things to me almost daily!

Hi, for many years now, the only real way that most companies can expand is to be global, but here in Great Britain not all big companies will have such resources to do so. The company that I worked for, for most of my working life, was started by a one man band, back in 1860. when I started with them in 1970, they were part of General Refractories Ltd. They were then bought buy Hepworth Minerals & Chemicals, and subsequently by Watts Blake & Bearne Minerals Ltd. The company already had international partners when I first started to work for them. In around 1996/7, the company was then bought by the Belgium company Sibelco. The site where I worked for the most part is still working although one of the partner firms was sold off, but they still have most of the sites that were there back when I started working for them, save for a few smaller ones, where the resources have expired. Their British headquarters are in Cheshire. Cooper Roller Bearings Ltd. is still making bearings on exactly the same site when my father worked for them, before I was Born, and are now part of the SKF group. The point that I'm making is that although these two companies are not exactly British anymore, they still work in Britain and employ British people that have to be trained in various skills, and I expect there are quite a good number of other companies that have a similar situation.

Regards Nick.

If the public want stuff that is ( relatively ) cheap to buy in the first place, it means manufacturers have to comply by using the most cost effective way of doing so and still make a profit. Hence , minimum labour and ' fitting ' of parts that in the long run will just not be replaceable. Look at modern electronic kit - so powerful and inexpensive to produce but , in most cases, unfixable due to the use of the very unique parts that makes them so powerful.

I used to repair such as an amateur, and enjoyed it. Went on to do it professionaly repairing computer PCbs ( remember TTL logic chips ? ) for many years, but these days if anyone asks me I may have a quick look for the bleeding obvious, but 95% of the time its just ends up - " sorry it's not worth it / you can't get the parts ( if they are specials ) ". The computers I worked on in the late 70s where primarily ' mainframes ' which you couild repair to the component level - but would you still prefer to pay £Millions to have a repairable unit that only gives you the equivalent computing power to a modern mobile phone ?

regards

That "In the factory" programme (Greg something) only ever shows food factories when I watch it

Did see a UK chap with a huge CNC on an industrial site 5 axis machining a bronze bar about 4 feet round and 15 feet long

It was a revolving biscuit mould

To use the machine that Ady1 mentioned means that someone HAS to know and understand the basics.

The prize examples of what happens when the revesre is the state is visible as politicians making their "sound bites" to climb onto what they see as the latest popular band wagon

Gordon Brown - Diesel cars.

Blair - W M D

Electric cars - Technology catching up fast, but inadequate infrastructure.

Hydrogen as a fuel. Ditto.

Ditch your hydrocarbon boiler - Get a heatpump etc.

Or am I just so old that I have become cynical?

Howard

Peter hit it in the first paragraph. Joe Public wants the most value for the cheapest price. In later employment, worked first in Hi-Fi manufacturing and then CTV, both design and development It became rather obvious that no matter how much effort expended in designing a quality product, JP would, 90% of the time, go for initially the Japanese, Taiwanese and latterly Chinese products based on price which now unfortunately are the main source of 'Luxury' goods.

Where would THIS 'hobby' be without mass disposable income and the likes of Axminster and Machine Mart etc.? Use it or loose it wouldn't allow two or three foreign holidays a year or a Merc,Audi or Beamer on the drive.

Regards Ian.

Heritage skills? Only two answers. Make thousands of components and sell cheap or a few and sell expensive.

Edited By Circlip on 11/08/2023 11:29:41

The prize examples of what happens when the reverse is the state is visible as politicians making their "sound bites" to climb onto what they see as the latest popular band wagon

Gordon Brown - Diesel cars.

Blair - W M D

Michael Gove - There are no down-sides to Brexit.

Boris Johnson - We really can have our cake and eat it.

Nigel Farage - Brexit has failed.

I am sure there are hundreds more.

Politicians make their mistakes based on the mistakes they learned that previous governments made. There is little new thinking if in fact there is such a thing.

Far too few engineers in government.

OTOH, Maggie was a chemist (non-pharmacological) for a few years and was the one that set us on the path to destruction.

Even more on the other hand, whereas the majority of senior politicians in the UK have a Humanities background, the majority of senior politicians in China are STEM trained.

I know which of the two societies I’d rather live in.