Current Woodworking Magazines

[lowell holmes]

Another magazine came today. It is thin and of no interest to me. I will not renew the subscription.

IIRC, this subscription was really inexpensive.

I have a collection of old magazines that I will read when I am bored.

[mike v flaim]

FWW and Mortise and Tenon magazine are the best out there. PWW, Wood, Woodcraft and Woodworkers Journal all compete for the same customer. Paper thin with the same old articles year in and year out.

[Jim Koepke]

FWW and Mortise and Tenon magazine are the best out there. PWW, Wood, Woodcraft and Woodworkers Journal all compete for the same customer. Paper thin with the same old articles year in and year out.

Maybe running the same old articles helps save on the cost of new content.

jtk

[lowell holmes]

Another magazine came today, it is not at all interesting.
It is not popular woodworking.
I doubt that I will renew any new magazines.

[Tom Bussey]

I am considering renewing WoodSmith but only because I been with them since Issue 22. I renewed with Wood for 3 years for the price of one but after a year they seem to have forgotten about the other 2 years and it is the second time this has happened. Anyway I am done with all the rest . Never had one to Fww.

[Mike Manning]

I picked up the FWW magazine archive on USB drive a week or two ago. Now I can enjoy every magazine from 1975-2018. Installed it on my PC and when you bring the app up it displays the magazine covers and you can select which issue you want to read. I haven't tried the search features yet. Got it off the big auction site for just over $60. Gonna be fun reading thru them.

[lowell holmes]

Another magazine came yesterday. It spent one night on the coffee table and then went to the stack.
I will not be renewing. I do read the old ones.

[Jim Koepke]

Another magazine came yesterday. It spent one night on the coffee table and then went to the stack.
I will not be renewing. I do read the old ones.

Yes, there certainly does seem to be more pleasure derived from reading FWW from 40 years ago than what is being published today.

jtk

[Thomas Wilson]

I have the complete set of FWW. I do like going back and thumbing the old ones. I do think the depth of knowledge is lacking in the recent years. The authors are now internet "content creators" who make their living being entertaining about making something rather than from the work product itself. I will say I find some of the current crop of personalities entertaining. I do think the YouTube,/Instagram/Twitter lifestyle for woodworking is interesting and it comes as a total surprise to me that it is possible. I would walk across the street to meet Megan Fitzpatrick, Craig Thibodeusx or the other authors this month because I am curious but they are a few levels down in woodworking skill from the people sought out in the early years.

Perhaps this forum should work on promoting our own writers and craftsmen to publish. I saw Brian Holcomb's piece carried in a mag recently. It was good. I say let's produce what we want to read.

True confession, I still have my rejection letter from the only submittal to FWW I ever made. Not to say I am bitter, but I know where the guy that wrote it works today and where he lives. Just joking. I still have the article if anyone wants to read it and the table that is the subject is in the living room. It was a pretty good piece.

Edited to add pic of the envelope. I thought the "Love" stamp was a nice touch.

RejectionLetter.jpg

[Tony Zaffuto]

Saw earlier today an interesting Youtube podcast, of a FWW visit/interview of the Woodsmith Shop current crew. Very interesting and complimentary to each other. Different audiences, but both contribute to the growth of our hobby and/or profession.

[Charles Guest]

The only subscription worth having these days is the full Fine Woodworking online subscription that allows access to the very first issue from the mid 1970s to present. They throw in the physical mag in the deal. There's gold in those old issues, if not enough nostalgia to last a lifetime.

[John Makar]

I sprang for the digital archives of FWW and PW a couple of years back, now have 100s of issues, enough plans to last the 20 or so years I figure I have left. That works because today's versions are repetitive or ridiculous (yet another story on how to tune scraper blades or make a cross cut sled). I browse the library's copies of the current ones, that's sobering because what I see demotivates me for subscribing. I poke at buying Mortise and Tenon, but it's pricey and pretentious and I suspect will maybe last 2 years. SMC is far and away my value purchase.

[Bill Lyman]

At my level, I like FWW, Woodcraft, Woodsmith and Mortise and Tennon.
I don’t want to store a bunch of magazines and without an index to articles' subject matter I don’t find storing them very helpful.
Most helpful is cutting and scanning articles into my computer and extensive indexed digital files. FWW works best because one can simply download the pdf of the article.
That way, if I want information on what I am doing, I simply call up that subject in my computer and read the articles related to it.

[Stan Calow]

I read most of them, with the goal of finding at least one good idea in an issue. Doesn't always happen, but I know that some of the rehashing is because its always new to somebody. I've bought stacks of old Woodworkers' Journal, Popular Woodworking, Woodsmith, and others at garage sales, and I see a lot of those articles and projects were crap even back then.

[Jim Koepke]

I see a lot of those articles and projects were crap even back then.

While straightening up a few neglected things yesterday an old magazine of my fathers was looked at. It had a lot of what could be considered crap from back then. The only date found inside Popular Mechanics Christmas Handbook is 1948. Subtitle is, "A wonderful collection of ideas, gifts, toys you can make.

Some of the ideas are reasonable. The one for the 120v powered locomotive and track for the back yard that is "virtually impossible for a child to get shocked from the third rail" seems a bit much by modern standards.

All Aboard.jpg

This just needed an image.

jtk