Why is my new FWW so thin?

[george wilson]

Can you really get your planes flat enough on a belt sander ? I plane my longer planes with my jointer,and plane the short planes with the longer planes.

[Tony Shea]

I've also been very dissapointed with FWW lately. Very few decent projects and 95% of the tool stuff is power tools that get the least (or would get the least) amount of use in my shop. The newish hand tool portion of the magazine is always something very simple and designed for someone just starting with hand tools. It just all seems very biased towards who spent the most money in advertising that month/year. And the cost for a subscription certainly is not worth it, well maybe with the $5 LN card scraper it is...yeah right.

[Sean Hughto]

I don't hate it, but it's got very little "soul."

The early issues of FWW were full of soul. Woodwork was always full of passionand soul (still is once a year I guess). Popular Woodworking had its soulful tones under Mr. Schwarz, though I wonder whether that will last as he departs.

I suppose some woodworkers don't care about soul, and just want the plans the power tool specs, but others like a little sincere passion for working wood and some depth to the articles, not just two columns of text and 16 pictures.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Articles like this are why I wonder about FWW sometimes. Something about the photo on the second page just looks sketchy. Granted, I probably have more fear of tablesaws than is warranted, but it just seems like the kind of thing that hand tools would work really well at.

[Sean Hughto]

Laugh out loud! Check out the caption on the bottom right of the first page:

"Wide bevels are attractive on curved adges, However they haven't been easy to cut, until now. Router bits are too small and most woodworkers don't have a shaper with a tilting head."

Yup, and one could never achieve such a bevel in short order with drawknife, spokeshave, rasp, or plane either I guess? That is a crazy article and jig. Poster child for power tool blinders.

[James Taglienti]

I got sick of the recycled topics. Theyve had 4 cover stories on how to burnish and use a scraper card in the last two years. Good riddance

[Chris Fournier]

Honestly, if you had the first 50 issues of any wood working magazine (and I'm being generous here) you'd have all you need. I really enjoyed FWW for quite sometime, then I began to see the same topic re-hashed by another author ad nauseum. Now it seems that topics are re-hashed on an 18 month cycle. It is no coincidence that I found the magazines to be tedious as I developed my own skill set and gained hours in my shop. At a certain point I think that you simply aren't going to gain much from magazines if you are at your bench a lot. This is not the fault of the medium I'd think.

The magazines really have it tough - they have to sell copies.

Veneering is a very exciting and important process in my shop (I know that was gushing - sorry). How many on this forum use commercial or shop sawn veneer? Not many. This is likely why the magazines don't spend a lot of time on the subject. Pity. Small market - small coverage of the subject matter. Hey, you don't have much money but you want to plane rough lumber? Of course you do! Let's do a bench top planer article for the budget constrained. There are plenty of those articles because there is plenty of market.

Covering the building of a guitar in a magazine? What a waste of time. It takes at least a 100 hours to build an acoustic - this says nothing about the fact that to build it you really should understand how and why a guitar works and now we're well beyond the scope of a magazine. Do you really think that a magazine can handle that kind of topic to your satisfaction? Of course not. Now FWW did try this out and William Laskin wrote the article over a few issues many years ago. This was merely a teaser but you couldn't ask for a more competent authority on the subject. Keep your expectations of what you can glean from a magazine realistic!

I haven't bought a woodworking mag in years. For that matter I haven't bought fly-fishing or motorcycling magazines in years either. I don't buy them now because they are not geared to folks that are "lifers" and well into it.

I think that we all pick up magazines looking for an inspirational kick in the pants when the fact is that once we have developed a solid knowledge and skill base we are like baby birds that are ejected from the nest - time to grow up and do it for yourself!

Now this is where some publications have stepped in and they have understood this and the new(ish) journalistic gig is rehashing the "bibles" of our craft. They dazzle the reader with insights into the distant past and revive old techniques that are referred to by woodworking inductees and sycophants as the (fill in the 21 century author's) technique. I find this practice to be distasteful but to be fair it is actually above and beyond the mainstream magazine offerings I suppose.

If you find current publications to be lacking, then dig deeply into the past for yourself. Buy the books that the journalists make reference to. Do a bit of due diligence and research your subject matter. Go to a museum near you or travel and see the works that are referred to in modern literature. Inspiration will have you contemplating quiting your desk job! You'll spend some money and that's what all enthusiats do. If as an experienced woodworker you are waiting for the real deal to be delivered to your door in a glossy magazine bi-monthly then you are missing the boat.

[Bill Geyer]

I have subscribed to FWW since issue #2. I keep it up for some reason...
The articles repeat and the truths(?) they speak are increasingly self-evident.
(i.e. 6 pages to tell me if I want an accurate combination square, buy a Starrett)
I still mourn the demise of Woodwork magazine.

[Dave Lehnert]

I like magazines alot and love to pick up a copy that interests me. But $7.99 for a news stand copy of FW is just crazy in my book.

[Dave Ring]

You've hit it there, Dave, Eight bucks for--what--fifty or sixty pages of actual content? I'd rather put the money toward a book.

[george wilson]

My wife emailed a bunch of pictures of my work to them about 5 years ago. They couldn't take the trouble to download them! Maybe if they did,they'd have a little more subject matter. Not bragging,but it is the truth.

[Ben Johnson WI]

Maybe they're spending too much time/money on the on-line stuff and are neglecting the print version. I was especially turned off by the article on benchtop sanders in this issue with their comment "who needs a handplane?"! I don't believe Pop Woodworking would make such an assinine comment.

I like to imagine the Schwarz as sort of a Chuck Norris type. Even after he's left, PWW writers who value their health won't speak ill of quality hand tools for fear of harsh retribution.

[Chris Fournier]

I like to imagine the Schwarz as sort of a Chuck Norris type. Even after he's left, PWW writers who value their health won't speak ill of quality hand tools for fear of harsh retribution.

This is the problem with the subject matter of much of our current woodworking journalism today - quality handtools are more available now than ever before in history. Ever. And as much as we piss and moan about it, quality tools have never been more affordable. We need to get this into our heads - you can do great work with crap tools and conversely you can do crap work with great tools. This is not the subject matter we should be self-flaggelating over. Pick your camp and do great work with a sharpened slot screwdriver or knock out garbage with a full set of Ashley Isles. Let's see the work, I really don't care about your tool brand or investment. (How you sharpen, tweak or customize? Yeah let's hear about it.)

Our craft has got to concentrate on encouraging quality work. This quality tool mantra is a red herring that encourages "tool offs" and not much else. Clifton vs LN vs Holtey spills ink but none of us are further ahead for it. Write articles about quality woodworking and the rest will fall into place.

[Andrae Covington]

Chris has said most of what I was going to say. But I won't let that stop me from blathering on.

I used to subscribe to several woodworking magazines. One by one I let them expire as I felt like I had moved beyond the basics they presented or, even more, as I moved towards hand tools. The renewed and wider interest in hand tools in the past few years has caused nearly all the (remaining) magazines to pay lip service, but there is only one in my opinion that really takes them seriously and periodically publishes meaningful hand-tool techniques. I recently decided to let my FWW subscription expire, so now I am down to just PW after the last few FWW filter in. PW is the only one I still feel like I get something out of it, but even there it is hit and miss. I don't blame the magazine for that. In the first place, there's no way that every article in every issue will be of interest to every subscriber. Beyond that, while I still have a great deal to learn about hand tools and building furniture, the more skills I develop the less benefit I get out of the magazines. Eventually I will probably drop PW as well. Another point to consider: like the rest of print media, woodworking magazines are struggling to compete with the internet. I have learned so much from the community on Sawmill Creek, including many many things that would never be published in a magazine. My modest contribution to SMC is a bargain compared to an annual subscription to any of the woodworking magazines.

[Zach England]

I will say that I really like their section where they showcase student work from some of the schools.