Deep Discounts on 3 Print Titles – Building Arts and Crafts Furniture, Make a Windsor Chair and Hand Tool Fundamentals

We’re clearing off a shelf in the warehouse for new titles, and as a result, have three good books (the print versions only) available right now at a deep discount.

The first is “Building Classic Arts & Crafts Furniture: Shop Drawings for 33 Traditional Charles Limbert Projects,” by Michael Crow. Right now (and only at shopwoodworking.com), it’s $7 (75 percent off the cover price).

I think we mis-titled this one; it should have been “33 Charles Limbert Furniture Designs,” “The Genius of Charles Limbert: 33 Arts & Crafts Designs” or something along those lines…because it’s a shame the work of Limbert isn’t more celebrated in the Arts & Crafts furniture-making books and annals. Not much is known about the designer beyond his work, which is preserved in period catalogs, but I prefer much of it to the heavier, blockier work of the much better-known Gustav Stickley. Limbert’s work has a lightness and elegance that I sometimes find missing in what we most often think of as America Arts & Crafts.

Next is our reprint of Michael Dunbar’s classic “Make a Windsor Chair” – one of the first how-to books on the subject. It, too, is 75 percent off the cover price – just $6.95. (On this one, we simply over-printed.)

For those of you who don’t know Mike’s work, he founded The Windsor Institute – for many years the only school that was dedicated to teaching people how to make these historic (and comfortable!) seats in their many forms, from sack backs to settees. He retired from teaching in 2016, but over the years taught thousands of people how to make Windsors – and he was a genius about it, making sure every student had all the tools at hand, extra parts roughed out, clever jigs to help speed the process along, and as much help as he or she needed to get the project done in the time allotted. Few students ever left the school without a finished project. And this book takes the same approach, with all the instruction a person needs to build a chair at home.

And finally…also at 75 percent off (I’m sensing a pattern here…) is “American Woodworker’s Hand Tool Fundamentals: Advice, Techniques & Projects to Build Your Skills” – it’s currently available for just $7.

We hired well-known woodworking editor John Kelsey to compile and edit the best projects from American Woodworker – advice and instruction from Toshio Odate, Frank Klausz, Mario Rodriguez, Andy Rae, Ellis Wallentine, Tom Casper and more.

In addition to more than 75 hand-tool tips and techniques (including what tools you need for a well-stocked shop), you’ll find 10 soup-to-nuts hand-tool projects to build your skills.

Get ’em before they’re gone (or before the price goes back up!).

— Megan Fitzpatrick