The Woodworker, 1936-51
A magazine for the serious enthusiast, The Woodworker started in (I think) 1896 and as far as I am aware is still in print now. We have ready to catalogue about forty copies from 1936 to 1951, to add to the 222 we already have, these going from 1927 up to 2000.
A slim monthly, all black and white but on good quality paper, The Woodworker wasted no time on contents pages or editorials. Instead, it goes straight in with ‘how-to’ articles, all accompanied by lovely illustrations. These are not for the unskilled hobbyist, and instead assume a level of skill to put this magazine very firmly in the ‘specialist’ category.
Taking some of the early copies, one article describes ‘the charm of a modern dressing table’, while in the later ones, you’d learn to how to build a garden shed, fitted kitchen or a radiogram table (with consumer gadgets moving on apace by the 1950s, just a few months later this had become a television-radiogram cabinet).
The ads are mainly for the serious woodworker. Very few powertools are in evidence – you will, though, find ads for a Wolf Cub drill for £4 19s 6d, a Masco bench saw for 6 guineas, and a Myford lathe £16 12s 6d, all of which add up to an awful lot of money. Most ads instead are for the more mundane tools – the hand drill or plane, for example, but all intended to last a lifetime. The ads for Johnson’s Wood Dyes are very much of their time. Of the brands, Stanley and Rawlplug are still with us.
