http://www.entacolimited.com/How-needles-are-made.html
to be fair, if they have gone the same route as spyderco, and sent engineers over there and taught them strict quality control, then the quality may well be the same as that produced here, its certainly the case with spyderco's chinese made knives, but then they keep a very close eye on QC. I have to admit I havn't noticed any quality difference, and students learning to sew thick leather can be very hard on needles
a couple of slight bends but no breaks.
My idea of how to make them was not so far off what Entaco describes, then...
I'm not a great fan of Spyderco knives, though I like the Native III that I have, and really liked a Paramilitary that I had on a BB passround about ten years ago. Other than that, I don't find them that comfortable in the hand or aesthetic. The Byrd range is just as uncomfortable, but uglier.
Also, I have to admit that there is a good-sized bit of sentiment in my bias against some Chinese-made goods.
I understand that the Chinese factories can make decent quality things, but that the importers have ordered things to be made down to a price, rather up to a level of quality. This is in a big part down to a vicious spiral of things being cheap enough to replace rather than repair, and also to our avariciously acquisitive society... So when an object breaks we replace it, but with two new items that are of slightly inferior quality. Each time, we have the illusion of getting what we were looking for at only half the price of the thing it replaced. So we buy two. And then then next cycle is shorter...
Part of my reluctance, therefore, to those goods is that the erstwhile manufacturer now merely an importer is trading on a reputation built up for good workmanship in the UK , Europe or N.America and is now charging the same for what has become an import from a cheap-labour country that has very shoddy environmental and workforce protection. The price tag for me, retail, is maybe slightly lower than what I used to pay (for a packet of needles, for example), but now a greater share of that is going into the pocket of the accountant or banker, and much less into the pocket of the people producing the stuff. And externalized costs are polluting the environment and poisoning the workers.
We have accepted this idea of "progress" being "increasing material wealth", which we far too often simplistically equate with "every increasing amounts of stuff"... and necessarily the system is wasteful.
