OT- The disappearing art of making scissors by hand

[The Other Mike]

and

No connection etc but damn proud we can still make stuff like this in the UK

[Jabba]

The Other Mike wrote

Childs play. Kids do it in Pakistan

[Nightjar]

I'm pleased to see they have a couple of apprentices. Keeping the skills going is always the difficult thing, particularly in engineering. Too many of today's youth don't want to get their hands dirty.

[whisky-dave]

I'm not to sure that's true, they aren;t exactly given much choice. They are told university is the correct way to go.

[Nightjar]

There is a considerable difference in quality though. Even with remedial work carried out in the UK, Pakistan made has always been a byword for poor quality in the surgical instrument trade. The steel is often of dubious quality and I would like to see any Pakistan made scissors (of which I have seen a lot) pass the loose fabric cut test at the end of the scissor making video.

[Nightjar]

...

Even in NuLabour's ideal world, there will only be places for half of them. That leaves a lot of school leavers who could go into apprenticeships, but don't want to. It is a widespread problem: a good quarter of a century ago I was talking to the Swiss manufacturer of some of the machines I used and he had exactly the same problem recruiting apprentices to work in engineering.

[Brian Gaff]

Yes one can obviously say it was cutting edge tech at the time. Brian