New Popular Woodworking Magazine

[Handplanesandmore]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking
https://www.popularwoodworking.com/end-g...handplane/

And that's the right thing to do!.........Giving credit where credit's due (no pun intended).

Simon

[hbmcc]

I think the article author credits are a random posting. The August copies I see may include the author, but not the issue.

[Mr Eddie]

"Look in your mirror?"  I beg to disagree.  Most people here hung on for a long time after the content started to drop, watched the editorial and author staff be drastically cut, and the resultant overall decline in the publication.  You want to blame someone, blame those responsible - the serial private equity ownership that has no real commitment to long term anything (remember WIA?), but manage quarter to quarter so they can suck out their money and leave the corporate entity burdened with debt service that is unsustainable, then put the shell into bankruptcy and sell off the name.  I've done a lot of M&A for a living, you should read up on it, you might find it interesting, here's a link pertaining to PE's involvement in  the retail industry:   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/busin...Position=1       

People are hungry for content, ideas, technique... and will support a publication that gives value; value takes investment in people and ideas, which ownership is not willing to fund.  PW is a shell of what it used to be, and they are not even giving it a proper burial.


EDIT:  Another viewpoint by Bob Lang:      https://readwatchdo.com/2019/03/popular-...ankruptcy/

Like you Rich I have seen what pure greed can do to personal lives and the total destruction it can bring to an industry.  The older I get, the more that old adage rings true - "Follow the money."
Lonnie

[Handplanesandmore]

Did PW break a record or what?

Flipped the pages of its latest issue that belongs to a buddy, and saw only three projects featured, including one that's woodturning (needless to say, a same old same old turning project).

How could you run just three projects? The cover project is really an mft style table.

Simon

[bandit571]

Methinks this horse has been dead so long, it's bones are now fossilized, yet some continue to beat on it......

[hbmcc]

Methinks this horse has been dead so long, it's bones are now fossilized, yet some continue to beat on it......

Thanks for reviving this thread Steve. 


Is a print version of PW still sold? The online magazine still digs up odds and ends. I read somewhere that Fine Woodworking is fading now.

[JSpill]

As far as fading goes what about Woodnet? Very few posts about woodworking. Hundreds of off topic posts.

[Handplanesandmore]

Thanks for reviving this thread Steve. 


Is a print version of PW still sold? The online magazine still digs up odds and ends. I read somewhere that Fine Woodworking is fading now.

The paper edition is still around, that's the one I read.  68 pages in the latest issue. The mft style table alone takes up almost 1/4 of the whole issue (17 pages?). Anything that takes up that many pages in one single issue.......is not worth building or reading!
 

Fading is unavoidable because almost all kinds of woodworking techniques or projects have been covered at various angles over the past 60 years. Someone just told me that how to make a marking gauge is featured in two different magazines he recently received. Oh boy, that topic has been recycled so many times.......Why publishers would accept articles on making marking gauges in the first place is beyond me (as a reader).

Simon

[hbmcc]

SNIP>

Fading is unavoidable because almost all kinds of woodworking techniques or projects have been covered at various angles over the past 60 years. Someone just told me that how to make a  marking gauge is featured in two different magazines he recently received. Oh boy, that topic has been recycled so many times.......Why publishers would accept articles on making marking gauges in the first place is beyond me (as a reader).

Simon

Schwarz mentioned in a recent Lost Art post that he needed a three volume set to cover all the details of making stick chairs. He was trying to write it in 600 pages. There must be a market for process. Or, Chris is actually delving into structural design and body comfort that I don't see in his proto iterations. 

BTW, I actually enjoy seeing the variety in marking and cutting gauge designs that are published. They can say so much in one page. And, they always work, where the others don't, which immediately has me curious.

[Handplanesandmore]

The recent two articles, based on what I was told, cover the same style of wooden marking gauges that one can buy off the shelf. Anyone who wants to make that kind of gauge can easily find videos or writeup on the net.

Clear writing is clear thinking, my college professor insisted. I find her advice as true today as it was in the 60s. 

Simon