OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

262852 Joshua Clark <jclark@h...> 2017‑08‑14 Re: Concern for the list
This topic comes up every few years as us Galoots worry about the
decline in traffic and content on The List. I have noticed that  the
volume has dropped off even faster the past year or two. I assumed it
was because we lost Jim Thompson who was probably single-handedly
responsible for half the content on the list these past ten years.

I haven't been actively posting to The List at all lately, mostly due
to a lack of free time. I'm still involved with old tools, more than
ever actually. I just don't have any time to get in the shop and make
stuff. My woodworking consists mainly of restoring, tuning, and
testing tools. It's fun but not noteworthy enough to post to the list.

There are new technologies that the younger generations gravitate to
instead of email. I feel like web forums came and went.A couple of
years ago I finally I quit following the few forums I was a member of
for a number of reasons. There area lot of Facebook groups (maybe too
many) that offer a variety of content of all sorts and quality.
Occasionally you'll see a Porch Alumnus pop up on one of the Facebook
groups. I saw Bill Taggert over in the Hand Tool Woodworking group the
other day! Twitter is fine, but it's mostly tweets linking to FB or IG
posts, blog articles, etc. The medium doesn't exactly lend itself to
conversation..

On the other hand, Instagram has some truly amazing hand tool related
content. I'm kicking myself for being late to that party as I feel
like I'm still catching up finding new people to follow. I'm
fascinated and inspired by the work that people like Richard Arnold,
Freddy Roman, Abel Rios, Chris Vesper, Anneofalltrades, Peter
Follansbee, and others put on IG. If you don't know who these people
are you should really check out their work. And those are just the
folks that I've found so far.. there's so much out there.

Anyhow, long story, short.. it shouldn't be a surprise that OldTools
traffic is declining. We haven't seen many new members at all in the
past 5-10 years and many of the members we have are getting older or
finding other hobbies. If you want to fix the lack of content then
post something! Just don't ask what the nib is for unless you want to
polish that spittoon over there in the corner, and it's pretty nasty
right now.

Josh in CT

Recent Bios FAQ