Shopnotes or Woodsmith,

[Aimlesssoul]

Which is good for beginners to subscribe to?

[pelligrini]

Tough choice between those two, I love 'em both.

Wood Magazine is a pretty good one too. The two you are asking about generally have more complicated projects, a lot of the means and methods they describe are very useful to someone learning.

[JR]

I've never subscribed to Woodsmith, but I think it's oriented to actual projects. Whereas Shopnotes is exclusively for shop furniture, jigs, and fixtures.

I got Shopnotes for a couple of years and found it to be very udeful. I'm building a bandsaw table from that magazine right now. They will do articles on building tools using brass and hardwoods, which I really like. I eventually stopped receiving it because after a coujple of years the projects become redundant.

JR

[RAFlorida]

I get both those mags and it

would be hard to pick which to subscribe to. ShopNotes has really cool info on tools and how to. But so does Woodsmith. If your budget would allow, I'd say get both.

[bigdaddyjohn]

Shop Notes. Building the jigs is addictive and the techniques used are good practice.

[MilDoc]

For the beginner, as I was not too long back, I would suggest Popular Woodworking or Wood magazines. Got a lot of useful tips from Shop Notes and Woodsmith back then, but the building projects were way beyond my skill level. I am just now looking through back issues and planning on several of the projects. But between the 2, I favor ShopNotes.

[LCHIEN]

they are complementary to each other. Both are published by August Home Publications and Shopnotes covers techniques, jigs, fixtures, and tools. Whereas Woodsmith covers more projects like furniture and boxes (while emphasizing certain techniques) and stuff like that. Each is published once every two months but the schedule is such that if you get both magazines you'll get one a month!

recommend both.

[herb fellows]

As stated before , these are apples and oranges, not to be compared directly.
I would agree that these are both too advanced for a beginner, could cause a lot of frustration. Try to have a look at both (maybe you can get a free issue to 'try it out'?)[/U], but I think you'll end up elsewhere.
I really don't know what to tell you to get though.
I think there's a website called 'beginning woodworker' or something like that, maybe that's a place to look for suggestions also.
Best of luck!

[MilDoc]

they are complementary to each other. Both are published by August Home Publications and Shopnotes covers techniques, jigs, fixtures, and tools. Whereas Woodsmith covers more projects like furniture and boxes (while emphasizing certain techniques) and stuff like that. Each is published once every two months but the schedule is such that if you get both magazines you'll get one a month!

recommend both.

As usual Loring got it right. But for the beginner I would recommend ShopNotes plus either Wood or Popular Woodworking. Save Woodsmith until you are ready for the bigger projects (unless you can afford 4 subscriptions; that's what I did years ago). ShopNotes is great for jigs etc - built a lot of them, plus useful shop "gadgets" like clamp storage.

BTW, check your library too. They might carry any/all 4.

[LCHIEN]

if you haven't seen either in the flesh, they come with no advertising at all (compared to chock full of advertising in Wood, etc) and comes on heavy book grade paper, not the typical shiny magazine stock. Suitable for storing (archiving) in a three hole notebook (yes holes are punched).

[LarryG]

+1 on the previous comments. ShopNotes for jigs, shop furniture, and roll-your-own tools; Woodsmith for end-result woodworking projects. A good book store will carry both titles. Look them over, maybe buy one or two issues of each before committing to a subscription, to get a feel for what each publication offers.

Another option: most of the woodworking-magazine publishers recycle their editorial content, typically in the form of special issues that are compilations of articles published over the last year or three. Fine Woodworking does it, WOOD does it, and August Home does it, too. In many cases, buying one or two of these every now and then will net you the "greatest hits" from a particular title, with little or none of the less-useful filler material that even the best publications invariably contain. A good book store will carry these special titles, too.

[LCHIEN]

yet another suggestion: Very little of the Shopnotes/Woodsmith content is really time critical, in other words they don't do much in the way of new product announcements and stuff like that. Most of it is timeless woodworking - consider purchasing someones 1-5 year old collection of Shopnotes or Woodsmith who's clearing out some shelf space. You'll maybe pick up a couple of years worth of both for the price of 1 year of either and have plenty of reading to do.

They pop up here in classifieds or maybe on eBay
example:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-12-Woodsmith...#ht_500wt_1120

[3thumbs]

I have had subscriptions for years to ShopNotes, Woodsmith, Wood and more. I read each of them cover to cover, and build something from them almost continually. I don't throw any of them away, so LOML thinks I'm a fire hazard!
DM

[isddarms]

You might check your local (larger) library. Mine has quite a few years' worth. Check out a years worth of each and browse through them. That should give you a good idea of which would be more useful to you.

[sangus]

Both these magazines are well regarded 'though I ashamed to say I do my reading of them at B & N. I have subscribed to PW and American Woodworker, both also pretty good.
As I understand it, Woodsmith sponsors The WooodNet Forum, and to me, a very decent woodworking show on PBS, Tuesday & Thursday at my locale. Good Shows IMHO.
Think I'm gonna bite the bullet and get Shopnotes...need some jigs for my routers.
HTH and be safe.

Art.