Further, such organizational know-how is not meaningfully transferable from one shop to the next; it is deeply embedded in the practices of each workshop. A Haynes flutemaker, for example, could not walk into the Powell workshop, sit down at a bench, and begin making Powell flutes. Over the years,
Several flutemakers have, in fact, moved from one company to another, and in every instance they have had to be partially ratrained, even to do the same jobs they were doing at the other company. They have had to learn a new “feel,” a different way of “handling the pieces.” Overall this know-how has been learned not by being given explicit measurements and tolerances, but tacitly, in the hand to hand judgments of feel and eye, by working on flutes and having that work judged by the other flutemakers. These judgments are typically expressed in terms of the right look or right feel that are unique to that workshop.