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.
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.
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.
Now that you’ve mastered clear finishes and can make your prettiest wood projects glow with pride, it may be time to turn to a bit of whimsy. There are a wealth of “painted finishes” that completely change wood into something very different. They go from simple faux bois (fake wood grain) to complex recreations of quill, bamboo, and stone (malachite, lapis, etc.) This introduction to the art of making wood look like marble will give you both ideas and techniques for your finishing playtime.
Throughout history, decorative painters have captured the magic of marble in paint. For many people today, the painted illusion of marbling represents a way of introducing colour, elegance and atmosphere into their surroundings. This book explains the techniques.
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…
I am a scientist and inventor, who has always been drawn to grand, overarching narratives, and unifying ideas. I have degrees in Mathematics and Architecture, a PhD in Biophysics, and spent 11 years studying fungal networks at the University of Oxford. I am currently working with the award-winning architect Ben Allen, to commercialize a patent for making POMB (poly-organic mycelium blend): a light-transmitting, thermally insulating, carbon-negative building material.
It is easy to imagine that in the Stone Age, stone tools were the critical thing, that in the Bronze Age, bronze tools were the critical thing, and so on. The truth is that right up until very recent times, most of our technology was made from wood. Even before modern humans evolved, we were deeply shaped by the physical realities of wood, and the challenges and opportunities it provides. Large animals that live in trees need big brains and spatial awareness to avoid falling to their death, and the habitations of early humans were surely closely related to the nests made by non-human primates. Stone tools enabled improvements in wood handling and wood tools, bronze-enabled wooden wheels, and many of the long-term trends in human history make a lot more sense from a wood-centric perspective.
In short, this charming and unique history of humanity casts a familiar and often…
A “smart and surprising” (Booklist) “expansive history” (Publishers Weekly) detailing the role that wood and trees have played in our global ecosystem—including human evolution and the rise and fall of empires—in the bestselling tradition of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt.
As the dominant species on Earth, humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos…
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 foundational text on wood as a material for building furniture, written by someone who knows the material thoroughly as both a wood scientist and as a woodworker. The combined insights give you the information you need to work with wood effectively. It reads well if you feel like plowing through it, but you can also use it as a resource for answering specific questions about wood and its behavior.
Understanding Wood is the definitive reference on wood technology, and is a keystone of every woodworker's library. The first edition (1980) sold over 128,000 copies: this new edition updates the classic text with new information on new materials: composite board, adhesives and finishes which have been developed since the original edition. There are also 225 brand new colour photographs! Up-to-date and Comprehensive: revised and updated edition of a woodworking classic (Taunton Press, 1980; 1-918804-05-1) which continues to sell thousands of copies a year to this day. New four colour photography is clearer and more informative. Comprehensive: everything you know about…
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.
The most prolific woodworking writer of the twentieth century, Charles Hayward spans the era that started with hand tools and saw the introduction of the first electric tools thus making clear the advantages of the traditional methods. Profusely illustrated with drawings of joints, tools, and actual techniques, this is truly one of the most complete books on the basics of traditional woodworking.
This book is intended to appeal to all those who want ot know the basic essentials of wood work and of furniture making in particular. It is written by a practical cabinet maker of many years' experience and is thus on thoroughly sound, approved lines. The author starts with the elementary processes - handling tools and cutting joints, passes on to the more specialized work of drawer and door making, veneering, finishing, etc., and closes with a series of attractive designs for things to make with full working drawings and cutting lists. Apprentices, students, and the man-in-the-street should find the…
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…
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.
Franz Karg's book is a challenge: Design and build cabinets without any sheet goods—all solid wood— and make the designs exciting, the joinery accommodate stress and expansion and contraction while adding to the quality of design, or even inspiring the design. Working your way through these designs will kick your thinking and your construction approach up a notch!
A master cabinetmaker shows how to build a wide array of lasting furniture for your living room, dining room and bedroom. Sharp photographs and detailed drawings provide the technical information needed to build wall cabinets and other pieces of furniture.
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…
