Jeff Miller is one of the country’s leading furniture designer/craftsmen. He is also a dedicated teacher and a prolific writer, with over 40 articles and 4 books (with a fifth in preparation). Jeff has exhibited furniture in shows from coast to coast, and has a piece in the permanent collection of the Chicago History Museum. Jeff’s work is heavily influenced by his former career as a professional musician, and he strives to make each of his pieces feel musical in some way.
Jeff is a runner and – despite the hindrance of living in the flat mid-west – an avid skier. A substantial chunk of his time is taken up by dialysis treatments, but he tries not to let that slow him down too much.
This is a beautiful and thoughtful book. And much like others on this list, it offers up a personal take on woodworking. Mike feels that shop time should be devoted to engagement in the work, and offers up strategies for achieving that goal. He also offers beautiful projects, from simple to fairly advanced, that foster learning a slew of techniques for accurate work. The book also includes a discussion of design and its role for the woodworker.
The Why and How of Woodworking reflects the growing appreciation for the handmade, a movement toward simplifying and uncluttering. There is a growing understanding of the need to fill our lives with meaningful and useful objects. How can woodworkers answer that call? Instagram sensation Mike Pekovich explains how to make work that is worth the time and effort it takes to make it, work that makes a difference, and work that will add to the quality of our lives. . Explains the basics of woodworking, from choosing lumber with care, cutting joinery accurately, and preparing and finishing the surfaces. .…
Born in London, I apprenticed under cabinetmaker Hugh Harris before moving to New York to study at Juilliard. Subsequently pursuing a career as a professional musician, recording and playing with groups including Van Morrison, Razmataz, and Full Tilt Boogie, I built a house in Woodstock, NY. In addition to operating my own custom-design furniture-making shop, and lecturing and teaching extensively from coast to coast, I’ve written and illustrated many more books on woodworking. I’ve served as Contributing Editor to Fine Woodworking (1985–1999), and Popular Woodworking (1987–1996), and as Editor-in-Chief of Woodwork Magazine (1991–1994) before becoming a featured speaker and presenter at the National Woodworking Shows.
Published in 1881 this is an absolutely fundamental book for the beginner. Amply illustrated, you will learn important details such as how to hold tools and what to expect from them as well as how basic joints are formed and made. Focused on wooden tools this is information not commonly reproduced in more contemporary books.
Jeff Miller is one of the country’s leading furniture designer/craftsmen. He is also a dedicated teacher and a prolific writer, with over 40 articles and 4 books (with a fifth in preparation). Jeff has exhibited furniture in shows from coast to coast, and has a piece in the permanent collection of the Chicago History Museum. Jeff’s work is heavily influenced by his former career as a professional musician, and he strives to make each of his pieces feel musical in some way.
Jeff is a runner and – despite the hindrance of living in the flat mid-west – an avid skier. A substantial chunk of his time is taken up by dialysis treatments, but he tries not to let that slow him down too much.
Chris has a very personal and very persuasive approach to woodworking. In this book, he uses the discussion of a tool chest and its contents to explain his take on the basic tools needed to work with wood by hand, as well as his philosophy of working wood this way. The book is funny, compelling, and an essential read for anyone interested in hand tools and working with them.
When I am too exhausted, ill or busy to work in my shop, I will shuffle down the stairs to my 15' x 25' workshop and simply stand there for a few minutes with my hands on my tools. To be sure, I thought I was a touch nuts because of this personality quirk. But after reading the oral histories and diaries of craftsmen from the last 300 years, I found it's actually a common trait among artisans. I am drawn, married or perhaps addicted to the things that allow me to coax wood into new shapes. At the same…
Azby Brown is a widely published author and authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environment, whose groundbreaking writings on traditional Japanese carpentry, compact housing, and traditional sustainable practices are recognized as having brought these fields to the awareness of Western designers and the general public. His creative work spans many media and has been widely exhibited internationally. In 2003 he founded the KIT Future Design Institute in Tokyo, focussing on cognitive and cultural issues surrounding the human hand and its use in the creative process, conducting collaborative research with neuroscientists and perceptual psychologists. A native of New Orleans, he has lived in Japan since 1985 and is currently on the sculpture faculty of Musashino Art University in Tokyo.
This book, first published in 1995, is a detailed how-to guide that answers a lot of questions about how carpentry is practiced in contemporary Japan. The drawings and plans are fabulously informative. It does not focus on tool use per se, but beautifully conveys the structural logic and reasoning that lie behind the joints and connections themselves. I keep it handy as a reference.
Azby Brown is a widely published author and authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environment, whose groundbreaking writings on traditional Japanese carpentry, compact housing, and traditional sustainable practices are recognized as having brought these fields to the awareness of Western designers and the general public. His creative work spans many media and has been widely exhibited internationally. In 2003 he founded the KIT Future Design Institute in Tokyo, focussing on cognitive and cultural issues surrounding the human hand and its use in the creative process, conducting collaborative research with neuroscientists and perceptual psychologists. A native of New Orleans, he has lived in Japan since 1985 and is currently on the sculpture faculty of Musashino Art University in Tokyo.
This is the book that got me hooked on Japanese carpentry when I was in college in the late 1970s. There’s not much explanation, really, but the black-and-white photos convey the sheer beauty of Japanese joinery in an evocative and compelling way. The drawings resolve some of the mystery.
This lively introduction to Japanese joinery not only delves lovingly into the unique history and development of Japanese carpentry, but also reveals many secrets of Japanese joinery. Presenting 48 joints, selected from among the several hundred known and used today, this visually exciting book will please anyone who has ever been moved by the sheer beauty of wood.
With the clear isometric projections complementing the 64 pages of stunning photographs, even the weekend carpenter can duplicate these bequests from the traditional Japanese carpenter, which can be applied to projects as large as the buildings for which most of them were…
As the authors of 27 hand-illustrated books, we are acutely aware of the time and skill required for good rendering. We are old-schoolers ourselves, having cut our teeth on “how-to” books before computers came into vogue. Our readers often tell us that a computer drawing does not have the same appeal and clarity as hand drawing. We are able to ‘talk’ a reader through the process of building something with our drawings. We have also found that the best illustrated books often have the best content!
Watson is both a talented artist and woodworker. He combines those skills in a number of books, but our favorite is Hand Tools. Everyone needs at least some hand tools in their shop, and they should know how to use them properly. Watson’s book contains 450 beautiful hand-drawn illustrations, in pencil, that beg to be framed and hung on the wall. The writing is close behind.
For those who would like to have the benefit of a woodworker's extensive experience with hand tools, this is the book to own. Crammed with practical information, it is the next best thing to looking over a craftsman's shoulder as he works with his tools, asking questions and getting straight answers in plain language, seeing how each tool is held and manipulated to get the best work out of it. From bit brace, chisel, and mallet to saws, specialized planes, drawknife, and spokeshave, Aldren Watson describes in detail the actions of the tools basic to good woodworking. All the procedures…
Michael Dresdner is a nationally known finishing and woodworking expert and guitar maker/designer, author of five books and several videos on wood finishing and guitar making. He’s been a Contributing Editor to Fine Woodworking Magazine, American Woodworker Magazine, and Woodworker’s Journal, wrote the Just Finishing byline column for American Woodworker Magazine for over 7 years, and the Finishing Thoughts byline column for Woodworker’s Journal for almost 20 years. While a consultant to one of the country’s largest coatings conglomerates, he wrote answers to over 8,000 questions for the www.woodanswers.com website blog and edited the Woodworker’s Journal eZine, an award-winning online woodworking magazine with over a quarter of a million subscribers.
Whether starting from scratch or expanding into new woodworking ventures, correctly setting up your shop can spell the difference between success and failure. Here’s where to come for information on electricity and lighting, tools, heating and ventilation, dust collection, benches, shop layout, and even safety. You’ll know what to buy, what to avoid, and what to do to make your workspace as efficient and comfortable as possible, no matter what flights of woodworking fancy you pursue.
This book is ideal for fitting a shop for the first time, or expanding an existing shop. "Setting Up Shop, Revised" takes the practical knowledge and ingenious solutions of the first edition and combines them with additional photos and drawings to create the most comprehensive workshop book on the market. Includes new photos and also updates on technology especially regarding dust collection, pneumatic tools and safety. With guidance on the best shop location, shop layout, equipping the shop with tools and accessories, shop safety and storage.
I have been designing and building furniture professionally since before 1976. From the beginning I’ve had an avid interest in what might be called “appropriate technologies”— when to use a hand tool or power tool — that is, for a specific use, which one gives the best results for the least time and effort? If you read the journals of 18th Century woodworkers you’ll find they were unbelievably fast —using only hand tools. I believe that by the 1970s much of that knowledge and many of the tools themselves had been lost. I set out to rediscover them.
This is the definitive book in English on Japanese woodworking handtools. Anyone who is or contemplates using Japanese handtools — and I strongly suggest that you take a second look at them if you haven’t already as there are a number of them that are superior in their performance to their western counterparts —needs to be familiar with this book.
The classic work on the tools and spirit of the Japanese master craftsman.
In Japan, a woodworker spends years learning to use his tools with great speed and skill. Only after he has proved his mastery can he proudly call himself a shokunin, a master craftsman.
Japanese Woodworking Tools brings the traditions and training of the shokunin to the Western world. Calling on his own apprenticeship as a tategu-shi (sliding-door maker), and on 40 years of woodworking experience, Toshio Odate here offers a complete guide to Japanese tools: thin saws that cut on the pull stroke, laminated chisels with hollowed…
As a teenager, I worked on cars and motorcycles in my spare time while apprenticing in an architectural millwork shop, paneling the homes of the rich and famous. Thus I discovered the great joys and satisfactions of working with my hands. After a long stint in graduate school, then four years as an editor at Fine Woodworking magazine and for Taunton Press books, I opened a custom design furniture business in 2000. Travel, writing, and reading are aligned passions, and I’ve lived, taught English, and woodworking here and abroad in France, Slovakia, India, and Japan.
There are more comprehensive and detailed books on green woodworking, but none with Alexander’s unedited, liberating spirit, or his pioneering work. Lines such as “You need very few tools to go into the woods and bust a chair out of a tree” gave me a kind of permission to be bold, experiment, and just have fun (which is what he did, and is where the book comes from). You’ll learn how to make chairs (chairs!) with a small set of tools. You’ll likely put the book down before finishing it, and run into the woods to get started.
When a tree is felled, the wood is green and is easy to cut, split, shave and shape. As it dries, the wood shrinks and hardensQand it becomes vastly more difficult to work. In the old days, wood-workers relied on the ease with which green wood could be worked to make the parts they needed, and on the way wood shrinks to hold these parts together. These old ways have almost been lost, but are revived here for the modern woodworker. Make a Chair From a Tree is a lively and informative introduction to the old ways of splitting and…
Michael Dresdner is a nationally known finishing and woodworking expert and guitar maker/designer, author of five books and several videos on wood finishing and guitar making. He’s been a Contributing Editor to Fine Woodworking Magazine, American Woodworker Magazine, and Woodworker’s Journal, wrote the Just Finishing byline column for American Woodworker Magazine for over 7 years, and the Finishing Thoughts byline column for Woodworker’s Journal for almost 20 years. While a consultant to one of the country’s largest coatings conglomerates, he wrote answers to over 8,000 questions for the www.woodanswers.com website blog and edited the Woodworker’s Journal eZine, an award-winning online woodworking magazine with over a quarter of a million subscribers.
Forget the tape measure. Leave the fractions, decimals, and mathematics behind. Long before the tape measure was a universal adornment on the woodworker’s belt, people designed furniture, houses, bridges, and cathedrals using nothing more than simple whole number ratios. This slender tome will show you how to do just that and will entertain you along the way.
Cartoon character, "Journeyman" and his dog, "Snidely" teach the basics of furniture making. Geometry is a major component of the instruction plus the basic tools of the trade are explained and applied to this art. A novice will truly learn the craft while an experienced carpenter will find this enjoyable reading.
