May 102013
Handwork in Wood
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historica
List Price: $ 24.99
Price: $ 24.99
A book from a master craftsman who knows how to explain his craft,
I recently became interested in weaving which uses a lot of relatively expensive yet simple wooden tools. I was able to make some of the tools myself and became interested in making more complex wooden tools for weaving (and spend my money on buying yarn!) Since I have not had any experience in woodworking this sounded like a useful book to check out. And I was not disappointed!
Written in 1910 but much of it content that relates to tools and techniques is still relevant today. The publication begins with the discussion of logging, starting with preparing for the logging,felling of the trees, floating the wood to its destination, saw milling, seasoning the wood, and storing lumber. The first 3 chapters cover these topics in great detail. Even though I did not find them relevant to my interest, I found the details both impressive and interesting.
In chapter 4 the author starts the discussion of hand tools. Each tool and the technique of using it described. The book contains no images, but the descriptions are so detailed that it is possible to follow without the images.
In Chapter 5, the author proceeds to wood fasterning, covering everything from nails and screws to hindges and locks.
If found a chapter of joints quite interesting. Being new to woodworking I did not realize there were so many.
Chapter 10 covers wood finishing. The author discusses types of stains, advantages of each, a bit of history where they came from, and of course, the techniques.
The author is clearly a master craftsman with an ability to explain what he knows. I am very impressed with this book both in the amount of information and the clarity of explanations. Much of it content is still relevant today. It certainly helped me to determine which tools I need to buy and some of the techniques for using them.
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Images are great,
I agree with the other review for this book – it’s a great reference work. But it does have pictures, and they’re great!
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A rounded explanation,
I have been working wood for a little over a year and find I enjoy the hand tools far more than the power tools. This book is an excellent and easily accessible read that gives a broad overview of the process right from logging to finished product with valuable nuggets of information for the hand tool worker. The Kindle version suffers, however, from a lack of pictures, which would display well on the iPad Kindle.
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