New Woodworking Magazine?

May be getting into this thread late and most of what follows may have been covered but here goes
Thoughts after going through some more of the premiere issue of Woodworking Magazine
I pick up just about every woodworking magazine I find on the shelves during my twice a month visit to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore. There are almost a dozen different woodworking magazine titles on my shop library book shelves. In each issue of each magazine I usually find at least one gem that made the purchase worth it, though I note a great deal of duplication and I’d swear that the editors are either lurkers in, or participating members of, rec.woodworking.. A recent thread on lock miter router bits and their uses - the next issue of several woodworking magazines have multi-page articles on setting up and using lock miter bits. A question about distinguishing the various types of varnish - an article on the subject, with photos of how a small puddle of how they look when dry being used to identify which is which.
Most of the magazines take a shotgun approach to their articles selection - a three pager on plunge routers, an article on a finishing method, an article about joinery and maybe something using a bandsaw or lathe. And scattered throughout - ads, lots of ads. Many even have an index of advertisers - convenient for the advertiser to find his/her/their ad as well as for the reader trying to find a supplier for hardware or some tool.
Most of the magazines have lots of photos and a diagram or two, some quite good and some just adequate. Some magazines have great illustrators and some have pretty good photographers. Most have pretty good writers as well. But when I really go through an article I come away wishing the photos or the diagrams or the text filled in most, if not all the gaps each one had. And it would be nice to not have to wade through pages of ads to get to the next page of an article
Surprisingly, despite the word “wood” in their titles, most wood working magazines don’t devote much space to wood. If they do anything on the subject it’s usually technical - how it works, how much it moves, how it takes a finish. What it looks like and what I’ll call its personality are seldom if ever mentioned. But it’s wood we all use and the right wood for a project can make all the difference in the esthetics/look/feel of the finished piece, be it a pedestal, CD cabinet, table or chair. The right wood, used the right way can make a fair piece much better and a good piece a really nice piece.
So when I picked up what turns out to be the premiere issue of Woodworking Magazine the first thing I noticed was the photograph of a beautiful, simple wall hung cabinet with shaker boxes on a table top below it. To the left, on a white background, was clean legible text of what’s inside. No need to search the cover to get a feel for what’s inside.
But the magazine was “so thin” -just 32 pages plus the front and back covers - another ShopNotes?
Inside the cover - THE INDEX - Now that’s refreshing. No searching amongst the first 8 or 10 pages of ads to find it. No multiple indexes to try and find. Just one easy to find, easy to read and look at index with enough info to let you know what’s covered.
Page 1 - Listen to Your Lumber - the editor & publisher puts wood right up front on the very first page. And his wood talks to him too. I thought I was the only nut that had conversations with wood (here’s how some of those conversations went - all one line so watch the line wrap )
http://home.comcast.net/~charliebcz/MT/ConversationsWithWood.html
In the middle of that editorial a quote “Each plank . . . can have only one ideal use. The woodworker must find this ideal use and create an object of utility to man, and, if nature smiles, an object of lasting beauty.” - George Nakashima
Now I’m one of those people who wants to know not only how to do something, but also why. Not just the mechanics and physics of why this method is better than that method in this application, but how does this fit with the other parts - to make a coherent, functional and beautiful piece of whatever “it” is. What’s going on not only in the hands using the tools, but in the mind guiding things.
It seems that article writers are given a rule book when they become professional writers for woodworking books or magazines. One of those rules is Never Use The Word “I” and NEVER let on that the writer has discovered anything for themselves that seems to fly in the face of “common knowledge’ or more likely, was a tried and true method a hundred years or more prior to the first power tool. There also seems to be a taboo about stating that what follows is the writer’s opinion.
The first article “Cut Accurate and Clean Rabbets” breaks most of the rules. “I consider this a technique that’s best for ...”
“The router table was my first choice for a couple of reasons ...” and he goes on to list his reasons.
Four pages with tip packed text and explanations of why this method works better than several alternative methods, clear black and white photos to illustrate key points in the article - with accompanying text right below each photo so you don't have to search for the photos text amongst evert=ything else on the page. Nice.
As I jumped around reading articles - the way I normally go through a woodworking magazine - I noticed the articles were directly related to the two projects in the magazine. - hanging cabinets - one being the Shaker cabinet on the cover and a similar sized small tool cabinet. What you learned in the “how to - and why” articles - you used in the projects. What a concept - a magazine with a coherent theme full of useful information that gets applied in not one but two projects that anyone with a basic woodshop could make over a weekend - excluding finishing time of course.
The last article “Bad Treehouse & Good Medicine” capped off the old adage - “Always leave them laughing” and was in the Walt Akers tradition of humor but without Helga. “The last thing I remember before the plank planted itself into my face was the smell of fresh wood.” This tale ends with a nice twist - one I’ll not divulge.
The inside of the back cover has Questions about Woodworking Magazine which the folks who did this magazine explain their goals and objectives, explaining why there are not ads and how to subscribe. Next to that is the “what’s coming next” info.
The icing on the cake was the back cover where the big full page ad is normally found.Instead there’s a nice “suitable for framing - or laminating” useful Screws Chart with clear images, dimensions, pilot hole sizes, driver sizes, clearance hole diameters etc.
Relative to the shelf price of most wood working magazines, the $4.99 cover price of this premiere issue of Woodworking Magazine is a real deal. When you remove all the ads from others “90 plus pages” on the market you end up with maybe 40 pages of actual articles scattered in all the ads. The fact that all the articles were directly related to the two projects in the issue is more valuable to me than 40 or 50 pages of stuff of which only 5 pages of interest to me. The fact that the editor and publisher obviously loves wood and woodworking gives me hope for the magazine’s future.
Next issue due in July will be $7 US - may be my first subscription to a wood working magazine. It looks like it will be another set of articles around the project them - a classic cherry side table. I think Fine Wood Working started out something like this. Though still a pretty good magazine, the changes in direction over the last few years haven’t IMHO been that good. Will have to see about this new and promising magazine.
charlie b