The original point being made was that people like Alex Beer can't afford to survive here in Australia as there are not enough people willing to spend the money on quality work. Quality work takes years of practice and dedication and often substantial outlays in machinery and overheads and when these guys are getting screwed on price for everything they do, they eventually can't afford to continue or they just get fed up and pack it in. As I said before, when the size of your work is small people expect to pay a small amount regardless of how long it takes to do. We make custom rings for Mannlicher Schoenauers amongst other things which we consider to be a small part but can take between 15 and 20 hours to produce as a one of hand made set. When you give them a bill for $1500 they die in the arse but the same customer will happily spend $5000 on getting two diffs rebuilt with lockers fitted and a compressor. Why, because they are big items. The most common reply when we do small time consuming jobs such as rings is "Woa that is expensive, they are only a pair of rings" The fact that the rings take longer to manufacture and you make less money on them is unimportant, it is the size that counts. In Europe and places like Germany in particular, there are many small shops like Alex Beer making superb hand made guns and they can survive because people there are prepared to pay for quality engineering work. Sure they have 80 million but people they also have hundreds of these small shops. We have twenty million people and can't support even a handful of top gunsmiths. The main problem is as our manufacturing and engineering sector has been so decimated by successive governments, people don't remember what engineering even is any more. Ask a teenager what a lathe is these days and they probably think it is some new App for their IPhone. You can not even learn Toolmaking at school any more, there are no more courses. Twenty years ago there were over 8000 tool rooms across the country, now there are only a hand full that actually produce tooling. There are no more Tech schools left so people don't understand what engineering is and if they don't understand then they don't want to pay. In Europe, the US, the middle east and now China people value high quality precision engineering and they are willing to pay for it. That is why there are so many old gun makers being reborn and so many high grade guns being built today. This is why the Swiss watch making industry is thriving.
The Kitchen was just an example and if you are a cabinet maker and feel offended, I apologise.

Waidmannsheil.