Woodcraft Magazine - and others
Craig Daymon
>I received a free issue of Woodcraft magazine yesterday with an order. It looks nice. Interesting, well done projects and featuring interviews with woodworkers showing an impressive degree of skill.
But...then I looked at the cover to see what they were charging for it. $7.99! Ouch! I reread the cover. This isn't Fine Woodworking (and personally, I don't think Fine Woodworking is Fine Woodworking anymore.)? I have been under the impression that magazines depend on advertising revenue for the bulk of their revenue, so why does Woodcraft want me to contribute so much? Afer all, the purpose of this magazine is to create a sales flyer for Woodcraft like Woodworker's Journal does for Rockler.
I thought it looked like a nice magazine and if I could get a year (6 issues per year) for $15, I'd subscribe. (I can get a year of Wood for less than $10 through magazinevalues.com -- site name may be wrong, but it's something like that.)
My magazine personal favorite right now is Woodwork, which FINALLY has a web site. It provides the greatest source of inspiration (to me) of any of the woodworking magazines and usually features something related to turning. I also like that the interviews and some articles can run 15 pages! That's room for some real insight. (Michael Fortune's article on Inlay and the Frak Klausz interview come to mind.) The print/photo quality and magazine size is in line with Fine Woodworking. It does lean more toward the "art" side of things, but that's part of the inspiration.
For general woodworking, not very strong on turning, I still think Popular Woodworking is one of the very best values. Their website also provides a substantial selection of articles from the magazine, with the selection changing periodically.
-Craig
