As mentioned in our most recent podcast episode, we are seeing the end of Issue Three coming soon. A long time ago, you all cleared out our inventory of Issue One and Issue Two. Now, Three is not far behind. We will be posting some excerpts here on the blog until this one goes out of stock. If you don’t have a copy of Issue Three, now is the time to order. Honestly, we get emails all the time from folks begging for Issues One and Two, so we recommend ordering Issue Three right now before it’s gone for good.
In related news, we just revealed in that same podcast episode mentioned above that Mike and I are beginning to make (very) short runs of Issues 1-10 Boxed Sets. (A long time ago, we squirreled away enough Ones and Twos for this anticipated project.) We’ll be making hand-tool-only, dovetailed white pine boxes for each set. Expect period workmanship: fore plane tracks, saw kerfs, and layout lines. Each individual magazine will be wrapped in brown paper with wax-sealed trade cards (yes, even Nine and Ten, which never originally had trade cards!) Stay tuned for more details about this super rare project. We only have so much inventory, and we’re not much for mass production, so we make no promises about exactly how many of these things we will be offering. If you’re the die-hard M&T fan who would want this once-in-a-lifetime set, stay tuned for details. We’ll keep you informed here and on our email list.
Yikes, things are hectic around here! Issue Ten is officially at the printer, stuff is selling out of our store, and new stuff is coming in all the time. It’s hard to keep track of it all! With Grace’s help now, the three of us are able to tackle so much more than when it was just Mike and me. We are so thankful for Grace’s help to make all this possible.
– Joshua
Here’s an excerpt from the soon-to-be-sold-out Issue Three:
“It’s funny how freedom can spring forth from limitation, but that’s exactly what woodworking has always been for me. It gives me purpose. It helps me to see beyond the culture of that town and encourages me to expand my comfort zone. Art evokes emotion and provokes change, and to say that there is no place for that in woodworking denies a great deal of personal potential. I find the world of makers to be scarily lacking the proclivity and fortitude to tackle tough emotional subjects, or even recognize their presence.
I think we often describe and categorize the work of others as an easy way of not having to deal with them, let alone consider them an equal. It’s so easy to project our own expectations on others in the same fashion we would ourselves – but that’s neither fair nor helpful. It’s much harder and far more demanding to live in a non-binary system that lacks, or really, ignores and deflects categorization. To let something, or someone, exist just as it is, without a name, isn’t easy. Perhaps this is why so many woodworkers twinge at a word like “art” that commonly defies definition and concrete edges.”
– Danielle Rose Byrd, excerpt from “The Best of Both Worlds: Embracing the Art in Craft” in Issue Three, available here.