Seek fame and fortune; write for Woodshop News

We have immediate openings for contributors to our Finishing, Pro Shop and Cutting Edge columns.

I can’t promise you fame and fortune. You certainly won’t get rich writing for this or any other trade publication, but it will increase your profile. You should be familiar with Bob Flexner, Jim Tolpin, David DeCristoforo, David Getts, R.W. Lee, Ian Kirby and A.J. Hamler. All veteran scribes who have added another dimension to their woodworking careers by contributing to your favorite magazine.

Published author still looks good on a resume. By sharing your knowledge, especially in a publication read by your peers, writing is a proven avenue to promoting your business and impressing customers. Some of you are posting videos on YouTube and ramping up their social media exposure – both excellent column topics, by the way – and writing would fit in well with your overall marketing plan.

What can you write about? Anything pertaining to the process or getting better results is a good fit for the Finishing column. Pro Shop deals with business issues, such as customer relations, capital investments, management philosophies, human resources, and marketing plans.

The Cutting Edge offers several opportunities. The topic can be moderately technical, such as controlling wood warpage; considerations for having 3-phase power installed; the best glue formulations for a specific kind of work, fastener strength; etc. The topic can be highly technical — creating furniture or cabinet templates for CAD use; setting up repeatable CNC jobs; math formulae for electrical loads; understanding and/or designing barcode batch jobs; or determining optimum horsepower and torque ratios for most-efficient table saw use, for example. The topic can even be minor technical (although we’d only do maybe one or two of those a year) such as efficient fastener storage; extending the life of belts in wide belt sanders; wood recycling and reuse; improving router/shaper collets; or strengthening furniture components.

We consider all topics. Just send a proposal, which should include a concise outline of what you want to write about, to editorial@woodshopnews.com.

While removing a tired kitchen, I found a well-preserved television guide, dated February 1964. It has comedian Jonathan Winters on the cover, dressed as a character from “A Wild Winters Evening” special that ran on NBC. It had been placed behind a cabinet back and confirmed the kitchen was original to the house.

It was a great surprise meant for me, the guy who would ultimately destroy the cabinetmaker’s work. The kitchen’s next remodeler will find an issue of Woodshop News, though I suspect it won’t take 56 years to find.

Xylexpo 2020, a woodworking trade fair in Milan, Italy, has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We waited as long as we could, hoping the situation would go back to normal,” exhibition president Lorenzo Primultini said in a statement. “We hope that, by the end of May, the Coronavirus effects will not be what we are seeing now, but unfortunately, we cannot tell when this emergency will be over on a global scale, and most of all, we cannot predict its impact on the industrial system and on the supply chains of the wood and furniture technology industry.” 

This article originally appeared in the April 2020 issue.