Estimates vary widely, but from 9.6 million to 17 million people across the United States do woodworking as a hobby, and many more do the occasional project or strip an old table for refinishing. While even good newsstands carry only a handful of woodworking publications, the World Wide Web has blossomed into a rich collection of how-to articles, how-not-to articles, and advertisements and commentary on all manner of tools, schools, techniques, hardware and accessories.
Woodworking has, after all, become a big business.
David Sloan, the editor and publisher of American Woodworker, a Rodale publication with a circulation of 300,000, puts the number of woodworkers at close to 17 million. Rodale estimates that these hobbyists spend about $7 billion a year on tools and supplies. Larry Clayton, the editor of Wood Magazine, the largest of the woodworking publications with a circulation of 600,000, leans toward the 9.6 million figure for the number of woodworking hobbyists in the country. But, he adds, "Interest in the hobby is increasing." A relatively small number of those millions of woodworkers are die-hard hand-tool buffs. A site called Old Tools is where these Neanderthals (a badge of honor) engage in tool drool ("rapturous description of a newly acquired tool"). They are tailless because they don't have power cords to drag around, and they are Galoots by definition because they are members of the Old Tools list. Not surprisingly, perhaps, those in the power-tool mode of Norm Abram, the star of PBS' television show, "The New Yankee Workshop," are called Normies. They have tails, often quite long ones. Now, with all these Neanderthals roaming the Net, the neophyte woodworker might be excused for thinking that the Stanley Bench Plane Dating Page was an electronic matchmaking service for those seeking romantic interludes around the shop and probably a site to be avoided. Not so. The site is a way of finding out when that old, say, Bedrock plane inherited from granddad was made. But if tracing the old plane's roots seems a waste of time, a new one modeled on older and better ones can be bought from a Maine plane maker, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks Inc., where the motto might be that they only build 'em the way they used to. While the traditionalists might spend their time at Old Tools or at The Electronic Neanderthal, an excellent staging area for links to a wide variety of other sites is through Woodworking Mega Links, run by the University of Georgia. Here are sites to see: Old Tools: www.pangea.com/%7Erock/oldtools The Electronic Neanderthal: www.cs.cmu.edu/alf/en/en.html Woodworking Mega Links: nespal.cpes.peachnet.edu/wood Fine Woodworking: www.taunton.com Wood: www.woodmagazine.com Highland Hardware: www.highland-hardware.com Woodcraft: www.woodcraft.com Lie-Nielsen Toolworks Inc.: www.lie-nielsen.com The Stanley Works: www.stanleyworks.com Good Wood Alliance: www.goodwood.org/goodwood
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