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  1. #1
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    Default woodworking magazines

    cleaning out stuff yesterday and old woodwork mags all from late 90's early 2000 era,
    got me thinking that with the surge of internet , youtube, forums etc who still buys woodwork magazines and if so why? when all the stuff would be on the net somewhere.
    I would love to grow my own food, but I can not find bacon seeds

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  3. #2
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    Feb 2006
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    Perth
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    In the 90's I used to buy about a magazine a week, mainly about computers but also motorcycles and cars and the odd wood working or handcraft stuff but times have certainly changed, I haven't bought a magazine for about 20 years, We stopped getting newspapers about 10 years ago. I read 1-2 paper based books a year but read or listen to more than a hundred e-books/audio books a year (last year it was 154).

    It's interesting to see the hundred of WW mags and dozens of WW books donated to the mens shed. At one stage we set up a book shelf to store them all but in the two years I was a regular there and we had this shelf I only ever saw 1-2 members looking at anything from those shelves. Recently I heard the were going to rationalise. The shed also applied for a grant to buy sets of WW DVDs of some magazines - I think we spent a few hundred $ on these sets. I don't recall them ever being used.

    Fine Woodworking association of WA had a decent lending library of DVDs on specific WW topic. I borrowed a few and they were quite good. Don't know if they still have this system or not .

    I often wonder how long newspapers will last. Paper based book might have to wait for Baby boomers to depart although I am still intrigued as to how popular paper books are with young kids even when the same content is available on tablets..

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    blue mountains
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    4,882

    Default

    I used to have a subscription to Australian woodsmith but after a while the same old projects keep coming around. Good if you want to build a bench as every second issue seemed to have a bench build. That and you can find the info online. That said I sometimes still go and fish one out for a relaxing read. I still prefer paper books too. e-books are handy when traveling however.
    Regards
    John

  5. #4
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    May 2007
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    Sth Gippsland Vic
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    I stopped buying most magazines around 20 years ago . I got sick of them . The adverts and the reviews of machinery with the brands being advertised in the same mag.

    One Old Magizine I do like is the old US fine woodworking magazines. The black and white ones from the 70s. I don't have many (1 or 2 ) but remember being lent a big stack halfway through my apprenticeship by a kind friend . It was a real awakening to the trade I was into and the possibilities . It was just what I needed with perfect timing . Id love to get a stack of old additions just to leaf through them again . Ive seen them for sale in the US on eBay and thought about it .

    Some of the later compilations of Fine Woodworking are real good.

    But no I dont but anything now

    I have bought and would still like to buy books on woodworking and Antique furniture . Id buy anything good.
    Second hand or new. Haven't been buying much for a while though. I need a dedicated room as a library / office
    The info in books is not on the internet that I know of . Not 2% of the info in books is there .

    It pays to have the info at my fingertips which is a pretty good reason . I get a call or email wanting a price given for a style of cabinet to house a tv. The picture they send is off the net . A bad example of a cheaply reproduced French provincial style cabinet . I reach up and grab an out of print old book on Antique French style furniture made in Canada around the 18 / 19 century . Plenty of detailed pictures that I can use to give options in the scale drawings Ill be sending off with a price . So rather than copying the bad repro and it ending up a step further away from that and the original style . Going back to the source , or close to the source of the style , and adapting that, gets me work .

  6. #5
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    Jan 2012
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    Littlehampton, SA
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    300

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    Funny that this comes up now - I was only just thinking the other day when taking delivery of the latest edition of Woodsmith, "Why am I still subscribing?" I don't think my sons will want the lot that I have; only 5 short of the full set. Sounds like the local Men's Shed might not want them either.
    One magazine I won't get rid of though, is one issue of Australian Woodworker. I happened upon it in New Zealand at a second hand store a few years ago while on holiday. It was from October 1954; the very month I was born.

  7. #6
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    Jun 2005
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    Helensburgh
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    I had an unbroken set of National Geographic until I stopped subscribing starting from 1964 and a lot before that back to the 1940's that I had found in second hand books shops and I could not give them away. How life has changed, I bought two car magazines every month for years and the other day I went into the local newsagency and all the magazine racks had been removed. Newspapers are relics from the past and the printed copies must surely be on their last legs, I read the digital copy every morning. Forums such as this have replaced the printed word and internet shopping is a constant woodworking show.
    CHRIS

  8. #7
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    Mar 2008
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    Hobart, Tas
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    I subscribe to fine woodworking, and if I stopped, would subscribe to something else.

    I like real magazines for a couple of reasons, namely
    1. I work on a computer all day. I don’t enjoy spending my leisure time in front of a screen.
    2. Magazines give me a cross section of woodworking interests, and often has me reading something I have no current interest in. The cumulative effect is that I become aware of a whole lot more than were I using the internet to find “relevant” info. I like this aspect.

    Where I get grumpy with magazines, is when they start repeating articles (I’ve not noticed that with FWW). That’s when I’ll cancel.

    I’m interested to see others’ responses.

    Lance

  9. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crunchie View Post
    One magazine I won't get rid of though, is one issue of Australian Woodworker. I happened upon it in New Zealand at a second hand store a few years ago while on holiday. It was from October 1954; the very month I was born.
    I still have a dozen or so magazines, well, scientific journals in soft back format, that I have kept and these are the ones in which my first scientific articles were published, but they never get looked at. Some publishers used to send these to authors for free but that stopped pretty early on in my career and once you had to pay for them I didn't bother collecting them.

    As an academic, science book publishers would send you a lot of serious science type of books for free in the hope that you would use them as a text books. When I retired I gave away about 12 cartons of books to students and staff at uni and, took 6 cartons of science books to a mob that donate materials to African education institutions. Then I disposed of 6 wheelie bins full of paper, mostly admin/bureaucratic stuff I probably should have got rid of before then but there were lots of science magazines (some were whole series I had collected from older retirees dating back to the early 60's). I asked around if anyone wanted them but no one did because they're all on line. At least they all went to the paper recyclers.

    At the same time I was retiring a Prof from the Biology department was also packing up his office. After work around 5+pm we'd often cross paths walking out to the car park and most days I'd see him wheeling a couple of crates of paper out to his car. "You will never look at them again", I'd say, But he was pretty sure he would need them. He did this for about 2 months and apparently filled up one of the rooms in his house with the stuff. Last year I saw him for the first time since retirement and he said he had looked a "couple" of the bits of paper he had bought home and he had got rid of most of it.

    I still have about 6 cartons of books left in my home office, about half are science and engineering stuff and some that I paid silly amounts of money for. My worst buy was a science book I paid £150 for in 1982 that turned out to be mostly written in French. Still I could follow the equations and diagrams etc so it was not all lost. The rest are hobby related but the only books that get looked at regularly these days are those on Electronics, the Workshop Practice series and the Guy Lautard books on metal working.

  10. #9
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    Jun 2010
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    Bundaberg
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    I enjoy reading 3 magazines, Australian Woodworker, Australian Woodworking Review... and Viz. AWR is my preferred woodie reading material, AW less so but I still get something out of it. And Viz? It’s just an obscene comic for larger children who are easily pleased

    Ooh, nearly forgot 200AD! When I left the UK I did a deal with my best mate back home in that I subscribe to that mag and have it shipped to him, then every six months he ships them in one massive pile. And my beloved realises I’m good for nothing for about 4 days solid as I plough through them!

    I’m still an avid book devourer and have a study full of novels, very very few have only been read once or twice. I do however have an I-thingy that I load Kindle and Kobo books on to read when I’m away at work, as a FIFO worker my luggage allowance is limited and books just weigh too much.
    Nothing succeeds like a budgie without a beak.

  11. #10
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    Nov 2007
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    I used to look forward to each edition of woodsmith but when they put the price up I stopped buying. As mentioned the articles started to go round in circles. I've got a fairly complete set of the first 130 or something. I do look at them occasionally but I'm not buying new ones.

    I have an extensive library of things I'm interested in and some books I've read through cover to cover several times. Just currently re reading Gary Dierking's outrigger canoes. One of the very best multihull books I have ever seen.
    I'm just a startled bunny in the headlights of life. L.J. Young.
    We live in a free country. We have freedom of choice. You can choose to agree with me, or you can choose to be wrong.
    Wait! No one told you your government was a sitcom?

  12. #11
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    I am one of those people who are addicted to reading and I can't understand why others in my family are not. I asked them what was going to happen to all my books and mags that I had collected since a teenager when I left this earth and they said they would get thrown out as they had no interest. So I promptly decided I would do that and as I have a kindle and a huge collection of digital books I am a happy camper. Magazines for me do not work as a digital copy but novels do. I have a FWW digital collection and never browse it like I would a magazine collection only using it for reference. I don't know what the ideal magazine viewer is but I haven't seen it yet and I think the format simply does not translate well to digital.
    CHRIS

  13. #12
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    I used to read magazines on the loo but since joining these and other forums I now use the time to check out what is happening on the forums using either my phone or iPad if I remember to charge it.

  14. #13
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    Like Xfigio above, I subscribe to Fine Woodworking. I purposely subscribed to the print edition, ironically for the same reason Xfigio gives, as I spend most of my day in front of a computer, and have no desire to extend that to my leisure time (yes, as an unlimited member, I also could access the magazine electronically).

    For that very same reason, I'm happy to plan stuff out using pencil and paper, and zero desire to learn any kind of computer based design/drawing program. Besides, pencil and paper give me time to think and consider

  15. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Midnight Man View Post
    For that very same reason, I'm happy to plan stuff out using pencil and paper, and zero desire to learn any kind of computer based design/drawing program. Besides, pencil and paper give me time to think and consider
    It's interesting that you say that because I'm a bit the same.
    I usually can only really do a decent computer drawing after I have sketched it out roughly on paper first.
    Maybe it's a spatial thing?

    Writing is fine, straight into the computer - I can generally type about as fast as can think.
    Calculating is also fine either straight into a calculator or spreadsheet or more complex stuff like an Algebraic App.
    Computer programming is interesting - I can program something small straight into a computers but for anything bigger than a few of screen I found it really pays to plan - and I like to also do that on paper with a pencil or pen. Once I have the structures/flow etc and variables roughly sketched out I'm back on the computer and away IO go.
    But drawing - have to play with it on paper first. I've tried using tablets with sketch pens etc - just can't quite do it - even Sketchup doesn't really do it for me without a rough play on paper first.

  16. #15
    rrich Guest

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    I used to get almost all the ones here in the US. Fine Woodworking was the first one that I dropped. It just wasn't to my taste. I kept getting Woodsmith and had an almost complete set, although the first 10 or 12 issues were photocopies. The only one that I get now is Woodworker's Journal. WWJ seems to be the only one that covers material from beginner to master craftsman.

    What I have noticed is that the major project in Woodsmith is similar to a community college semester project. What I mean is that in community college (Years 13 & 14) the project is intended to teach a set of skills. A Woodsmith project uses a set of skills to complete the project.

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