Fine Woodworking Magazine

Fine Woodworking Magazine has been around since 1975. The magazine printed issues every season offering articles on various focuses of woodworking. Every issue contains projects, different crafting techniques, articles on wood theory, and works from different master woodworkers. Fine Woodworking’s primary audience was the more skilled woodworker, but they kept the magazine interesting enough to appeal to all in the woodworking community. As the magazine grew to be more popular, they started to print more frequently graduating to a monthly magazine, they also have articles that appeal to Diy hobbyist and beginning woodworkers. Now, Fine Woodworking has multiple platforms to view, read, and listen to their product.

If you are green planet conscious and do not want to subscribe to the magazine, they literally have all options of viewing for their product. They are on social media, offer website subscriptions, YouTube videos, podcasts, and if you are not interested in any of those they also have a TV show on PBS called Rough Cut (maybe the ultimate This Old House rival). Their podcast is Shop Talk Live, where a couple of hosts talk about random things in the woodworking world. I have recently listened to an episode about glue ups (I know, sounds exhilarating). They are very active on Instagram where they feature how-to projects, new articles in upcoming issues, and other work of woodworkers on Instagram. Fine Woodworking also utilizes YouTube in the same manner as Instagram, where they will feature some popular woodworkers and have them go through a build to show the viewers different techniques and tips and tricks of the trade. As an alternative to their magazine, they also offer a full subscription to their website. You can view some things as a guest, but to have full access you can choose to subscribe for a fee to get things like digital magazine issues, work projects, build plans, and access to their article data base to over 40 years’ worth of articles and plans.

Overall, I would say that the primary subscribers to Fine Woodworking’s Magazine is the older generation of woodworker. However, I believe they do an exceptional job of making their product available to the younger generation in the form of digital media. I am sure that the magazine will stick around even with the digital media takeover. Some demand for the magazine will die off with an older generation, but woodworkers like tangible things they can touch with their hands and they always will. Woodworking is a very small community, and a magazine used to be the only real current event information someone could get outside of joining a woodworker’s guild.  Now with the ability to share your hard work over social media and share knowledge over YouTube, it makes being a beginning woodworker a lot easier than I would imagine it would have been 40 years ago.