{"id":1757,"date":"2017-03-06T10:37:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/?p=1757"},"modified":"2017-03-06T10:37:58","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:37:58","slug":"choosing-hardware-the-fancy-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/2017\/choosing-hardware-the-fancy-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Hardware (the fancy kind)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

“Weight is the quickest gauge of value.<\/em>” \u00a0\u00a0This 2004* NYT<\/a> article by Marco Pasanella about shopping for home fixtures & hardware had me at this\u00a0fourth paragraph opener.\u00a0I do this ALL the time\u00a0– I pick something\u00a0up and if it weighs heavy in my hand I am halfway to being happy with it. Whether I can afford it is something else entirely, and that’s why the article is very useful by giving some clues to getting\u00a0quality items without overspending.<\/p>\n

I have a little experience with the making of nice things, and I am\u00a0very<\/em> picky about buying things. For me, a\u00a0lot of the choosing is tactile – it comes down to whether the “thing” is pleasurable in the hand. Does it have a good weight? If you drag your fingernail along the edges, does it feel smooth or a bit pitted? Is the finish consistent? Are the little nooks & inside corners smooth? Do the “hidden” faces feel nice? Besides weight, quality mostly\u00a0comes down to finish** – which\u00a0is responsible for a lot of the sticker price since\u00a0the best finishing is done manually by experienced craftsmen\u00a0(suck it\u00a0robots<\/a>!).<\/p>\n

*As to\u00a0the question of\u00a0why I was reading such an old article – the answer begins with the letter “G<\/a>“. \u00a0I have been recently working on the designs for a set of 9 custom steel-and-glass doors for a penthouse in lower Manhattan. The architect specified some gorgeous\u00a0Nanz Hardware<\/a> for all the locksets & hinges in his hardware takeoff. Sadly there wasn’t the budget to go this route, but it would have been SO nice to be able to hold some of those Nanz pieces in the hand.<\/p>\n

**This is true for non-mechanical items at least (Door pulls, etc). Once you start getting into things that “do work” – hinges, latches, faucets etc – things get a lot more complicated. Generally speaking though, if a piece has first-rate finishing & material, its pretty likely that the mechanical design is reliable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Weight is the quickest gauge of value.” \u00a0\u00a0This 2004* NYT article by Marco Pasanella about shopping for home fixtures & hardware had me at this\u00a0fourth paragraph opener.\u00a0I do this ALL the time\u00a0– I pick something\u00a0up and if it weighs heavy in my hand I am halfway to being happy with it. Whether I can afford […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"Choosing Hardware (the fancy kind)","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7yDEm-sl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wilsonbuilt.com\/wb_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}