That sounds pretty close to what I'm going for, actually. The solution is, of course, to define a set of building blocks that is orthogonal but easy to use, so that clever artisans will be able to combine in many different ways. (like the 25 different blades, with 25 different handles, etc from the article). My ideas are a little different, but mostly in the details and what sort of controls I'm hoping to give the artisans.