Wood Review vs Woodsmith

[Dean]

LOL

[Master Splinter]

Well - its AWR for inspiration and general arty-ness, as I'm not a fan of precisely detailed drawings as I've never got those sizes on hand!

My magazine buying habits include...

Fine Woodworking - used to buy regularly; but about six years ago they did a market reposition and started including more basic articles so it lost its overall appeal and now I only get about 2-3 a year. (I always saw it as a slightly snobbish aspirational magazine - I liked the overall production values and quality feel). But I do have the back issues CD-ROM.

Fine Homebuilding - buy when there's something interesting that translates to local application. Probably 2-4 a year.

Australian Wood Review - Sorta fills the Fine Woodworking niche - good production values and I like the arty stuff, plus the ads are useful for finding suppliers! Probably two or three issues a year hit my 'buy' button.

Australian Woodworker - last copy I purchased was about ten years ago. The overall layout and photo quality hurts my eyes, I've seen amateur newsletters with better design. Has poor shelf appeal - I don't think I've even picked a copy up for a flick through in the last five years... there's just too much framing pine with a gloss estapol finish in it for my liking!!

Bunnings Advertiser..errr, sorry, Australian Handyman - ok, I'll admit that I get this occasionally when doing a coffee at Bunnies. I like playing 'spot the US article that has been re-worked for Australia' (or scouring the photos for signs of photoshopping to remove US power points and so on!). It's gotten worse with time, now it includes gardening pages and cooking pages. Sorry, but neither of those fit my definition of 'handyman'!

Woodsmith - never purchased a copy, always seems too much like a hastily Australianised version of ShopNotes (which I occasionally snag a torrent of) crossed with Popular Woodworking. Not really into precisely dimensioned drawings, as its easier to work with what you have available.

[Moo73]

I am seriously addicted to FWW and subscribe to AWR. I buy Woodsmith if there happens to be a project I'm intested in - particularly like to browse the back issues at WWWS.
Biggest problem I have is that I read more than I do - a habit I'd like to break...
The main criticism I have with woodsmith is that it always seems that they use a lot of machinery that I don't have..which just feeds my tool addiction

[Howdya do that]

I subscribe to AWR, Woodsmith and Penthouse.
I read the articles in Penthouse and just look at the pictures in the other two

[Pheonix]

Your nose is growing longer by the minute!!

[Scribbly Gum]

Australian Wood Review and Australian Woodworker are, I think, aiming at different audiences.
AWR seems to have wanted to establish itself from the outset as the "top shelf" magazine for woodworking afficionados, and as a showpiece for artistic and creative design. It has acres of high quality photographs - quite often of studio quality.
AWW seems to have been the voice of Woodworking clubs and guilds, and has targeted them as the prospective audience. It stuck with the same layout for years - lots of words and the occasional photograph for illustration. Things started to change over at AWW a little while ago and I have noticed a marked shift this year towards more photographs and lots more colour.
The one thing that AWR did for Australian woodworkers was to raise the bar considerably for a locally produced magazine. It has got slicker with its presentation as well as grown in size. The last one was 98 pages.
It has also matured as a publication in my opinion. In its early days, tool reviews always concluded something like this: Tools X, Y and Z all have their individual strengths and are good value for the price....
The reviewers went to great pains not to offend anyone by being too critical. Nowadays they are able to be a little more objective and actually choose one as better than the others.
I like both magazine but for different reasons.
Australian Woodsmith I also like because the illustrations are so good, and the workshop tutorials usually easy to follow.
Anywho..... just my 2c worth.
Aren't we lucky to have good stuff to read and challenge us?
Regards from Tele Point
SG