This posting may be useful to some and old hat to others. For long time subscribers to Fine Woodworking, for example ( or other mags as well) the web sites provide an index which if you have collected enough back issues can provide a useful source of reference information. Joe G
They just came out with their second edition of the best from their past issues. It comes as a CD and will set you back $125. I guess that is cheaper than buying an entire collection from No. 1 through current issue for $600+ from some collector, except I would really like to have some of those silly things from the very first issues (How to build your own spindle shaper, planer, etc). I would be willing to pay $250 or so to have everything they ever published in DVD form. Do not know why they didn't do that instead of their limited 2nd edition. I received their issue No. 1 unsolicited with an invitation to subscribe. A few months later I subscribed and except for a brief interruption I have been a subscriber ever since. Problem is I probably have saved less than 1/3 of the issues.
Curiously, there have been a lot of complaints about their 2nd edition CD and they are coming out with a revision which will be sent out to past purchasers free of charge. I hope the revision is an improvement because their CD is very hard to search and the pages, at least on my computer, do not come up right.
I know that FWW has a lot of detractors and I agree that criticism is probably healthy but I remember the quality (and quantity) of woodworking magazines published before FWW appeared on the scene. They has been a revolution in ww tools and equipment since they appeared. I think FWW spawned a renaissance in craftsmanship and that there are so many excellent woodworkers around today who would have never been drawn to the craft were it not for the interest FWW created.
Pre FWW there was not a single magazine that ever ran anything much beyond building birdhouses and Adarondack chairs with an occasional "telephone table" thrown in.
My $0.02.
Joe
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