Weekly Editorial
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Innovatively Yours
On Thursday night, November 1st, you, faithful reader, became a winner of a prestigious award. On that evening, Woodworker’s Journal was selected from a very competitive group of magazines and awarded the MMPA’s Innovation Award. We were primarily recognized for our online efforts, from our Online Survey Group, to our Resource Digest Online, travel blogs … but specifically noted as one of our successful and innovative products was the eZine and its new sister, the Premium eZine pages.
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Here We Go!
It’s possible you may remember that, in the early days of the eZine, I would come up with random contests, most of them at least tangentially related to the world of woodworking. We had the messiest shop contest — that one actually frightened me. The weirdest project contest was an eye-opener. We had the woodworking poetry contest: I laughed, I cried … I was perplexed. (But I loved the poems, I still have many of them on my computer.)
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Shop Projects Sharing Time
Last time out, I asked what sort of woodworking projects you all were working on this fall. Thanks for sharing – you’ll find some of the answers I received in the Feedback section. It used to be called Reader’s Response, but with the recent redesigning of the eZine, we changed the name. (I mean, come on, there’s more than one reader of this thing!)
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Fired Up for Fall?
Autumn is, without question, my favorite time of year. The cooling temperatures, the turning colors — the free candy at Halloween celebrations — what’s not to like? (I know that a lot of folks look at it as a harbinger of the winter to come, but that’s like saying a birth is a sad story because it means death is inevitable. Grab a little perspective here: if you can’t live for the moment, how about a whole season?)
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Test Drive Our New Premium eZine…for FREE!!
Last issue, we sent out our new look eZine for the very first time. This time out, we have even bigger news — our groundbreaking Premium eZine section. What’s in the Premium section? I am so glad you asked!
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A New Look with an Old Friend
So how do you like my new digs? After what is the Internet equivalent of about a thousand years, we have spruced up the eZine a bit. We have added new groovy graphics and a couple of new departments (What’s In Store Online and a Staff page – so you can learn about your eZine writers). There is also a mysterious “Premium” button on our navigation bar, but I can’t give you any information about that for two more weeks. (Stay tuned, sports fans!) We have also moved the previously named “Reader’s Response” to the nav-bar and changed the name to Feedback, which is what it is. We changed the Toolmaker Insider name to Industry Interview for the same reason. I think you will find that we have included all the benefits of the “old” eZine, added a couple of new things to read – and made it look more up-to-date. And with that said, the improvements are not done yet. So tell your friends and neighbors to stop by and check things out.
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We’ve Got No Promises
“Hey dad, don’t worry, I’m safe,” were the words that my son Brandon spoke to me on the phone last Wednesday, August 1st.
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Summer Reading – We’ve Got It!
About this time of year, I regularly hear about “must-read” books for the summer, or “our special summer reading list” announced on the radio. Titles on these lists are spoken of in dulcet tones with an admonition like: “perfect for a lazy summer evening on Martha’s Vineyard.” Well, as hard as it might be for you to believe, I have never spent a summer evening — lazy or otherwise — on “the vineyard”. (I have spent plenty of summer nights in my workshop, however.) For that reason, I am bringing forward some news and an offer that I think might interest other summer shop rats.
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Rock ’em, Sock ’em – Talk About Tools!
n this corner — weighing considerably more than his doctor is comfortable with – is Rob “Cool as a Cuke” Johnstone. And in the opposing corner is the challenger, Chris “Fire” Marshall. What in the world am I talking about? The AWFS Battle-Blog Royale, that’s what! It is an online blog in which Woodworker’s Journal field editor Chris Marshall and yours truly will be putting forward our best entries gleaned from the summer’s biggest new tool trade show.
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I Said, “It’s Bubinga, Bubba!”
Do any of you share my personal dilemma? I know that is too broad of a question, so specifically, do you have a hard time telling sapele from bubinga? Iroko from say – jacaranda? When I started woodworking, my family’s cabinet shop used oak and birch and maple for 90 percent of its work. We did spread our wings and use ash and cherry… pretty hoity-toity stuff…from time to time, but that was about it.
