Woodwork magazine searchable archives?

[Mike Halmarack]

Can anyone tell where I'll find the most comprehensive searchable archives of woodworking magazines, for the purpose of finding specific plans? TIA

[Andy Hall]

For plans for specific items and projects,

is a pretty good source.

Another, although more in the direction of techniques and things to be adapted is Fine Woodworking. They have an online service as well which is a subscription and allows you to download a fair proportion of their articles.

[Mike Halmarack]

Thanks, I've seen a few sites selling plans and they look ok. I may end up using the plansnow option. I thought a mag archive would be useful because I'd be able to locate the type of plan I'm interested in and get a magazine to read in one hit. "Fine Woodworking" might be a cut above my ability range. The Woodworker magazine is more my level, not to denigrate the publication in any way. :-) I'm hoping there's a site that has links to multiple magazine archives, so I can scour the lot from one spot.

[Keith (Dorset)]

Mike,

The best thing I found (to avoid buying individual plans online) is to get one of those woodworking disks on eBay - such as 'Searcaves' (a double CD compilation).

I bought several different ones. Some of the plans repeat across various CD authors, but no matter, I still now have hundreds and hundreds of different plans / projects, for only a few quid. What's more I can compare a variety of pergolas or whatever, and build / adapt whatever suits best.

Good luck,

Keith NB - I am in no way connected with 'Searcaves' or any other of these CD authors (just in case anyone has breached any copyright).

[Mike Halmarack]

Thanks Keith, I'll have a look on eBay as you suggest. The CD's should be very useful. I think that the potential in being able to search multiple magazine archives from one place on the Internet would be useful on a much larger scale though. I hope I can either find site that enables this or start developing one.

[Guy King]

The message from "Keith \(Dorset\)" contains these words:

Any of them of windowframes? I'm still looking for ideas before I start buying the timber.

[Keith (Dorset)]

Mike and others

As an afterthought (as a now part-retired magazine photojournalist) I wonder if the magazines would be able to offer such an agreeably invaluable archive...

The reason for this is, that in many cases, where the original plans / feature material had been bought in from freelancers, they would have to pay further 'electronic rights' - extra payments in order that they could be allowed to reproduce the articles online. This is currently a very hot topic among journalists and photographers, as some listreaders here may be aware

Perhaps this may be a reason why 'we' have both apparently failed to find substantial archives of plans from woodworking magazines which we can dip in to.

Just a thought...

Cheers,

Keith

Mike wrote:

[Keith (Dorset)]

Guy

I haven't noticed any plans for window frames on these woodworking-plans CDs.

Keith

[Mike Halmarack]

What you envisage in terms of having these plans available on-line is the ideal situation. You make a good point about the electronic rights complications. Failing this level of availability though, I'd be happy to buy a copy of the original magazine if there was a plan I wanted in there. The trick is pinpointing a specific plan in the magazine's publication history.

[Guy King]

The message from "Keith \(Dorset\)" contains these words:

Ah, well - thanks.

[Andy Hall]

I've never found that. WHat you can find is a lot of designs and ideas that originated from one or other of the Taunton publications and have been adapted.

I quite often look at the PlansNow stuff for ideas and adapt them or use the names as search terms to find other sources of the same thing.

[Mike Halmarack]

That's probably worth pursuing.

Yes, thanks. Might as well adapt to what is there, rather than trying to elaborate on what isn't. :-)