"Woodworking" Magazine goes Subscription

[J T]

Sat, Jan 12, 2008, 5:26pm (EST+5) [e-mail] (B=A0A=A0R=A0R=A0Y) doty sayeth: "Woodworking", the no-ad, newsstand only, no-BS, very well written magazine, by some of the Popular Woodworking editors has gone subscription! This has become my favorite magazine, when I can actually find it.

I check out all the woodworking magazis when I'm in the store. Even a few of the craft magazines. But I think it's been over a year since I bought ANY woodworking magazines. Quit subscribing to all but one many years ago. The one woodworking magazine I subscribe to is WoodenBoat. Lovely woodworking, and excellent dream material. I used to get National Fisherman, many, many years back, and they always had some fascinating wooden boat plans, ranging from rowboats, up to large boats. I think I'll try checking that out again.

By the way, WoodenBoat recently had a very interesting article on shellac, and it's use in batbuilding - quite a bit of which could be applied to 'conventional' woodworking.

JOAT

10 Out Of 10 Terrorists Prefer Hillary For President

- Bumper Sticker I quite agree.

[Andy]

Wow - so people actually like ads? I'd rather find out about new products via catalogs, blogs, forums, or magazine article writeups. But if there's a market for a WW magazine with more ads and less content, I'd want to be a paid member of their staff! Maybe I'll start that magazine - charge people for something that I'm already getting paid to publish. Sounds like a deal to me.

[Brian Henderson]

I'm just as interested in seeing the newest hand planes as I am the newest power tools, but I know what you mean. A lot of my tool purchases come because I find out things are available through the ads.

[Puckdropper]

Andy wrote in news:36ab6fea-fd8f-4209-a1ef- [e-mail]:

It really depends on the ads and how they're done. I don't mind ads in print, they're easy to ignore if I want to. Look at all those "free auto trader" magazines or "free classified" papers.

If the number of ads is reasonable, and they're on-topic for the magazine, I might just pay close attention to them.

Puckdropper

[daryl1138]

Don't care much for ads but I could live with or without them. This is one of the best woodworking mags left (especially with FWW articals saying you need 42 bar clamps to do a 3 foot glue up). It was tough to find locally and I purchased it on site when I came across it at significantly more than $5. There are more than enough $2 per issues subscriptions out there rehashing plans for yet another patio chair. If those are to your taste more power to you. Twenty bucks for a subscription to Woodworking is a bargin off of cover price and well worth it. If that is what quality costs I am willing to support it. I hope as readership increases they are able to do more issues in a year.

Daryl

[Chris Friesen]

Actually, they said you need a lot of pressure to do an "optimal" glue joint. This is true (if you doubt them, take a look at the titebond website, they suggest a minimum of 100psi for softwoods, and up to

250psi for hardwoods).

They didn't cover how much pressure is necessary for an "acceptable" joint, which is closer to what most home woodworkers are looking for.

Chris

[daryl1138]

That is kind of like saying the optimum weld is when both peices of metal are completely melted into one molten mass. IIRC the "optimum" glue joint pressure for cherry was 1200 PSI and a bar clamp was rated under 1100. With no cleats or pads my bar clamps faces are about one inch wide which means at best putting clamps dead nuts against each other I still fall short of the "optimum" joint. Maybe it was scientifically true it is literally unattainable short of a very large hydraulic press and like melting part A and B into a single gelatenous mass it lacked any reasonable level of common sense and should have never made it into print of what is often otherwise one of the best 2 or 3 mags out there. IMHO they knocked themselves down one notch for printing it and another for the lame defense this past month.

Ah but back on course with this thread. "Woodworking" has not always been easy to find in my area but I do consider it one of the best.

[Andrew Barss]

[e-mail] wrote: : On Jan 17, 9:52?am, Chris Friesen wrote: :> [e-mail] wrote: :> > This :> > is one of the best woodworking mags left (especially with FWW articals :> > saying you need 42 bar clamps to do a 3 foot glue up). :>

:> Actually, they said you need a lot of pressure to do an "optimal" glue :> joint. ?This is true (if you doubt them, take a look at the titebond :> website, they suggest a minimum of 100psi for softwoods, and up to :> 250psi for hardwoods). :>

:> They didn't cover how much pressure is necessary for an "acceptable" :> joint, which is closer to what most home woodworkers are looking for. :>

:> Chris

: That is kind of like saying the optimum weld is when both peices of : metal are completely melted into one molten mass.

I think the editors of FWW don't understand the word "optimal". It means, basically, the best solution to whatever (possibly multiple) contraints and goals there are in a given problem. So, by my standards anyway, an optimal glue joint is one that is strong enough to hold the piece together under normal conditions without failure; that does not use excess materials; that does not compromise the look of the piece (so e.g., wrapping the whole thing in epoxy-soaked fiberglass cloth isn't gonna work for a jewelry box); and that minimizes glueup time, including use of clamps; and is easy to do. The optimal solution finds a way to achieve all of this (maximizing/minimizing) without compromising any individual goal.

The FWW article, and the editor's defense, failed pretty miserably in finding an optimal solution to any problem other than "how can I justify buying an extraordinary number of clamps?". The fact that the author was a scientist makes the article even more appalling since he should have understood what optimization is from the outset.

-- Andy Barss, considering dropping his subscription

[Upscale]

Possibly, English is not that scientist's first language and that person is not as fluent in it as they could be. Your mentioning this makes me think of some of the arguments I've had (mostly online) with some really smart people who seem to think that even though they're working in an English environment, they don't need to be completely fluent in the English language as long as they have all their scientific knowledge down pat. I'm pretty sure most won't admit their language difficulties because they feel it diminishes them in the eyes of others despite all they scientific smarts and credentials they may have.