Workshop Companion is group of sites on the Internet – web sites, social media channels, and online stores – that offer information about woodworking, craftsmanship, tools and other DIY topics. Together, they provide core information you need to be a competent craftsman in both printed and video formats.
Much of this is based on the books, articles, and plans I have published over the last half century. I began writing about woodworking almost as soon as I began woodworking professionally. I built American stringed instruments – dulcimers, banjos, and dobros – for several years while freelancing for magazines. In 1979, I founded and edited “Hand On!” magazine for Shopsmith, then began a small how-to publishing company several years later. Bookworks, Inc. produced books for several larger publishers, including the popular “Workshop Companion” book series for Rodale Press.
In the late 1990s, the Internet began eating away at the DIY book market, and in the 2000s, YouTube all but killed it. For a time, I went back to Shopmith to run their Woodworking Academy, and while there produced twenty-plus “Sawdust Sessions.” These were among the first streaming woodworking videos. In 2020, Bookworks switched from book production to video production, and we began the “Workshop Companion” YouTube channel.
Today, we have over a million subscribers on four social media platforms – YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We sell digital woodworking books and plans through our store on Shopify, and we review and recommend woodworking tools and materials on our Amazon Affiliate store. We have begun to build a massive educational web site, www.workshopcompanion.com, which – when complete – will offer hundreds of pages of woodworking information and instruction.
