Popular Woodworking

[Handplanesandmore]

The best way to learn woodworking is to take a class. Second to that is to watch a good video or dvd. There is no doubt Paul Sellers has the best online videos (free or paid) to offer. Rob Cosman's dvds are great but not his online series which is too long as he doesnt edit it. Most other online series stuff suffers from filling the time with lots of talk. Some of them like to talk and can turn a 5 min. subject into a 15 min. segment!

What crushing magazines is how we obtain our knowledge in the modern days. The invention of computers and internet have led to the death of many things (retail stores are being threatened by Amazon, e.g.). Large dept. stores will die in the long term.

Simon

[Rob Young]

If you go to YouTube and search "woodworking", you'll get over 1,000,000 videos. Even if 90% off them are crap, that's still 100,000 quality videos you can learn from. People are getting their info in new ways these days. Magazines are dying.

Nah.  Seems more like 99.9% of the 1,000,000 are junk (bad content, bad/dangerous methods, redundant, poor designs, very annoying production quality...) so that leaves a mere 1,000 to sift through.  

Ain't nobody got time for that!   


Go make something by using your head instead (good alliteration).  

[Adnick]

Still get PWW & FWW and use to get shopnotes

YouTube can't be blamed for the decline in PWW and FWW just look back. The decline started well before YouTube and even prior to digital subscriptions. PWW has declined the most, but FWW is apt to put out very bad opinionated advice, I listen to shop talk live, just to see what they are going screw up next....

In both cases they need more real woodworkers, and less journalists on staff, and some new field talent.

Andy

mos maiorum

[AHill]

Still get PWW & FWW and use to get shopnotes

YouTube can't be blamed for the decline in PWW and FWW just look back.  The decline started well before YouTube and even prior to digital subscriptions.  PWW has declined the most, but FWW is apt to put out very bad opinionated advice, II listen to shop talk live, just to see what they are going screw up next....

In both cases the need more real woodworkers, and less journalists on staff, and some new field talent.

Andy

mos maiorum

The decline of the printed media is a symptom of the disease.  Woodworking as a hobby (and a profession) is waning.  The furniture industry has all but disappeared from the US and gone offshore.  As industry left, so did the demand for skilled woodworkers.  That forced many high schools and vocational schools to eliminate shop classes from their curriculae.  What's left are custom high end shops, some custom trim shops supporting the construction industry, and a host of hobbyists.  Since the population of woodworkers has dwindled, so has the subscriber base.  Another disease is this design-on-a-dime philosophy where you can update your home for pennies on the dollar.  You get junk makeovers with junk content all over TV.  No need to spend thousands of dollars on industrial grade woodworking equipment when you can make a coffee table with a cordless circular saw, some screws, sandpaper, and spray paint.  Just a sign of the times, I suppose.  We can all hope that craftsmanship returns, but hope is not a strategy.  As long as people want things cheap, domestic skilled trades will continue to decline.

[kludge]

Every time I open my Wood magazine subscription I see a YouTuber writing articles. I think magazines know that this is how people are consuming woodworking content, and are trying to keep up with it. That's how I got hooked. Watching Norm as a kid, then the Woodwhisper as an adult.,

I would have zero qualms recommending

Marc Spagnolo
Stumpy Numbs
Frank Howarth
Jay Bates
Paul Sellers
Matt Cremona
Matthias Wandel 
Garage Woodworks
and Carl Jacobson 

all are super competent woodworks producing weekly woodworking content.

[Ray Newman]

AHill:  very good post and I agree!

[cputnam]

I used to work in the printing industry - at a plant that printed. bound and mailed over 6 million magazines/month. We printed, bound and mailed ~ 4 million weeklies: Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report and People Magazine. I watched the page count go from an average of 64 (100+at year end) dwindle down to 32 or less. Our plant died due to a lack of concessions from the unions (primarily pre-press types whose jobs were most threatened by the coming technology) and cost pressures from the newsweeklies.

I have described an early symptom of whatever the disease is. Some of it has to do with relentless globalization and all the strain that puts on individuals. Everybody has to run faster to stay in place. Much of it has to do with the internet and all that is available on it. The rate of change is accelerating in this world. In the 1800's it was not difficult to absorb new technology, but we still went from muskets to machine guns in a hundred years. My grandparents were born in the late 1800s when the horse & buggy was still the primary means of transportation and some lived to see men walk on the moon.

Computers are accelerating the rate of change. Technology will morph quicker than we think and that will change lifestyles around the world. Who will have the luxury of the time and space to deal with paper periodicals? Books are rapidly becoming collectibles. I suspect that hobby content will live only on the web. I doubt that that the newspaper will survive, at least if it continues to need to be supported by ad revenue. Printed media and all the tree killing that entails will die a slow and painful death. Mortise and Tenon is bucking the current trend with solid content and cutesy packaging but when their costs rise they will be thought of as a book - and book buying (in physical form) is on a total decline.

Not sure what it all means, but "the times they are a changing"

[Adnick]

Have to say that I really enjoyed the December issue of PWW

mos maiorum

[Stwood_]

I dropped all my subscriptions 6-7 years ago.

I miss shop notes.

[Steve N]

The best way to learn woodworking is to take a class.

Been doing woodwork for over 50 years, and I still love to take a class now and again. Taking one with Chuck and Glen at 360 Woodworking this May. It's a guaranteed week straight in the shop, make a new piece of work, and laugh yer butt off with good friends the entire time. I highly recommend it