Charles Brock of The Highland Woodworker sat down with Megan Fitzpatrick recently to talk about how she went from a scholar of literature to become a woodworker, editor and publisher.
In the segment, Brock gets Megan to explain how she got started in the craft, and during the piece she shows off her first project from summer camp, plus many of the big Shaker-style pieces that adorn her home in Northside. She also talks about gender in the craft (and how she wants it to become a non-issue) and her books with Rude Mechanicals Press.
It’s a good story – one she doesn’t talk about very often. And it helps show that simply being fearless and determined in woodworking can carry you a long way.
Check out the segment above. Have your dictionary handy.
F+W’s old building on Dana Avenue. They owned it outright. Then….
F+W Media Inc., the parent of my beloved Popular Woodworking Magazine, filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 on Sunday, reporting it has more than $100 million in debt and a host of problems with its e-commerce business.
It will be easy for people to shrug their shoulders at the bleeding out of another mid-level media business. After all, who subscribes to magazines anymore? Or reads physical books?
I, however, would like to paint a different picture for you. Imagine the rest of this blog entry in the voice of Bob Ross.
It wasn’t the changing economy that (perhaps) mortally wounded this once-magnificent company. It was debt and venture capital, plain and simple.
When I started at F&W Publications Inc. in 1996, it was owned by the Rosenthal family, which started the company in 1913 around two magazines: Writer’s Digest and Farm (writing and farming were the “F” and the “W” in the name). The company owned its building outright. It had no debt. It had a fully functional warehouse. Its biggest weakness was it was a technological backwater. (When I left seven years ago it was, ahem, still a technological backwater.)
In 1999, we were told that the third generation of Rosenthals didn’t want to run the business, so we were being sold to a group of investors.
First order of business for the investors: Sell the building, grab the cash for the investors and sign a lease on a building in the suburbs. Borrow money to buy up other companies. Sell their assets (buildings, cars, coins). Reduce the workforce to pay the loan that you took out to buy the company. Pay the bankers.
With what money is left, try to improve the business.
When that doesn’t work, sell it to a new group of bankers. These specialize in cutting costs. Fire the experienced managers. Reorganize the way the company works. Borrow more money to buy even more magazines and websites. Cut their costs. Fire their people. Then sell the limping company to another group of venture capitalists.
And repeat until you end up in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.
As a publisher who sells old-fashioned books, I can tell you there is still a healthy appetite among people young and old for physical products. But they have to be products that are worth buying. That are made with great effort (and, at times, expense). And you have to protect your business by avoiding debt. When the bankers start running a publishing business, it’s game over. The only thing they are interested in printing is money.
My heart breaks for the poor SOBs who have been keeping the lights on at Popular Woodworking Magazine and all the other magazines under the F+W umbrella. Unlike me, perhaps, they stayed on out of loyalty (or desperation, perhaps) to make it work. The deck was always stacked against them because most of the revenue they brought in went right to the banks to pay the debt service.
My hope is that Popular Woodworking and the other magazines will end up with new owners – perhaps ones who love publishing more than they love insane margins.
Crazier things have happened.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know someone will ask, but we are not buying Popular Woodworking. I think the future is in scrolls of some sort. Or painting animals on rocks. Maybe gourds.
Chris Williams teaching his chair class in our strorefront in May 2018.
On Friday I finished teaching my first chair class, 16 years after taking my first one in Canada from David Fleming. That class – plus John Brown’s “Welsh Stick Chairs” – set me on a long journey of building and researching chairs in an effort to find my own designs and techniques.
It was a personal struggle, which I didn’t document here on the blog or in my books except for the stray breadcrumb. And it was a lonely one until I met Chris Williams, a Welsh chairmaker who worked with John Brown for many years.
Finally, I had someone to talk to about chairs who spoke the same design language. Who had read the same books. Who looked at these gorgeous and eccentric chairs with similar eyes. (Side note: I like Windsor chairs, but they are different enough from Welsh ones that when I talk to Windsor makers I feel like the awkward stepchild.)
Meeting Chris about four years ago inspired me to finish work on my designs and push the structure of the chair a lot harder than I had been for the previous 12 years. There have been struggles and failures – cracked armbows, dead-end designs and a bad batch of glue. It was like walking in a fog for years. Now that seems to be lifting, and I think I can see a long distance ahead.
But I still remember my first chair class with a perfect clarity. I also remember the sheer frustration I experienced when I returned home and began building my second Welsh stick chair within days of stepping off the plane from Ottawa.
I didn’t have any patterns. I didn’t have the jigs I needed. I didn’t have any wood appropriate for chairmaking. And I was missing several important tools. But I plowed forward and made a chair anyway. And then at least 50 more.
When teaching my first chair class, I wanted to remove the barriers to making a second chair. So all the students made copies of my patterns in Masonite. I gave them all a set of the weird jigs I use, including the rig for drilling the sticks, the block for locating the stretchers, Zee Hinder Pluggen (don’t ask) and a handmade half-pencil.
And I offered them a kit of chair parts, just like the kit they received to make their first chair with me. I hope it works.
I don’t know how many chair classes I’m ever going to teach – certainly no more than two a year. They are exhausting to prepare for and execute. Plus, we have Chris Williams coming here in May to fly the Welsh flag and teach another batch of students using his methods.
That, and Chris’s upcoming book on John Brown, is probably enough to infect the next generation of Welsh chairmakers. I hope.
You can hear my voice and see my rolling eyes on today’s Shop Talk Live podcast from Fine Woodworking via this link. The podcast is a 37-minute interview with FWW’s Ben Strano about a variety of topics. Here’s a partially complete list:
Ben’s high school nickname
Me getting bleeped for the first time ever
Why we teach classes at the Lost Art Press storefront
How I tried to get Matt Bickford and Peter Follansbee drunk to launch a publishing empire
The one weird trick to destroy “social media depression disorder”
Taco talk (actually, they edited this out)
New scrapers from Crucible Tool
Ben’s a great guy and did a good job of making me say silly things. And if you want to hear me say even sillier things, sign up for Fine Woodworking Live. If not for my presentation, then for the talks from the legit presenters. It should be a great weekend.
