A letter to the editor

Ralph D. Wilson II — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:37:09 GMT

Tom, I had sent this in an email and you graciously asked me to post it here, so here it is. ;-)

Dear Editor,

Let me begin by complimenting you on your publication and by expressing my enjoyment of reading it. I have only recently started setting up my woodworking shop (although I have done a bit of woodworking in the past) and I look forward to creating several of the projects that you have featured.

However, there is one point that was, in my opinion, overlooked in this particular article. The reason I noticed it is that I am in the process of deciding whether to build or buy a router table and this particular design caught my eye. I eagerly read (and reread) the article and then started looking at the list of materials that would be required for it. Well, actually, I started looking for the list of materials. What I found was a "cutting list" which, although eventually quite handy, does not provide the basis for someone to quickly determine what will be needed to complete the project.

A significant improvement to this article would have been a simple list of the material, in standard (or as standard as it comes) lumber units, e.g.
3/4" x 4" x 8' hardwood, qty 4
3/4" x 4' x 8' plywood, qty 2

As it is, I now have to try to figure out the layout for the cuts in order to determine how many units of what size of lumber I need to purchase. While this is not an impossible task, it is a task that should be unnecessary and is only made necessary by the omission of this finishing touch on the article by the author (which could have been "encouraged" by the editor ;-).

As I am really just now getting started in my woodworking, I am also just now getting started in selecting the publications to which I will be subscribing in an on-going basis. There are other publications that I have found to consistently supply a List of Materials along with either a List of Cuts or, in some cases, diagrams with the layout of the cuts, for instance, on a standard sheet of plywood. Since woodworking is not my current full-time job, I have to take into consideration the time required to figure out how much material I will need for projects as well as the time required for the projects (and, of course, the utility of the projects). I hope you can see that, especially for the weekend woodworker, the need and time required to figure out how much material will be required can significantly impact the marginal utility of a publication containing an article about the project.

I hope that, in future articles, you might encourage the inclusion of this information so that the projects might be just that little bit more accessible and your readers just that little bit more encouraged to tackle them.

Respectfully,

Ralph D. Wilson II

Woodwork Magazine

A letter to the editor