Woodwork Magazine (Ross Periodicals)

[John L. Poole]

Does anyone know the story behind Ross Periodicals of Novato, California, and, more particularly, the story or history of its publication: Woodwork Magazine. I see the company also publishes magazines for luxury sports car (Bimmer, Forza, Excellence, Sport Car International). I see from doing some research that John Lavine is the editor; is he also the owner?

The web site,

doesn't give any history or background about the company. Regrettably, they do not offer a CD of their back issues.

I was searching eBay to see if any entire collections of Woodwork Magazine had sold and did not see any complete sets in the current or completed sales. Do offers of sale of complete sets occasionally appear in its classifieds (assuming it has a classifieds section)?

The current excerpts available at their website cause me to think it has some good editors/publishers.

John

[John Grossbohlin]

Seems to me that Graham Blackburn was the editor of Woodwork for a while... he lives in the Woodstock, NY area now and is publisher of Woodworking in Action.

like Woodwork a lot... one of the three woodworking magazines I still subscribe to.

John

[Patriarch]

"John Grossbohlin" wrote in news:m97Jg.328$v% [e-mail]:

John Lavine, the current editor, is pretty active in the SF Bay Area woodworking community. He teaches (or did, at least) at one of the Oakland area community colleges, ran his own shop for a while, and is a regular presenter to many of the clubs in the area - particularly in Sonoma County. A good fellow, who understands the artists and craftspeople we have in abundance here.

The magazine is one of my favorites. Like John, I'm down to this one, Fine Woodworking, and Popular Woodworking. For me, that's adequate. The others are often fluff to me.

Patriarch

[mjmwallace]

John:

A couple of months ago, our club had a presentation from the editor - J. Lavine. He told us that the owner does publish all of those other magazines from the same place. They share art director's, layout editors, etc. and therefore are able to keep their costs down because of the sharing. The deadlines are tight and staggered across the magazines, so in one sense, everyone is busy every day working a new publication.

Not sure what other info you want. They JUST really got their website up and running some time ago, so a digital publication is probably way behind. What I understand is that the owner just doesn't "get" the Internet, had to be sold on it.

MJ Wallace