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Good books on hand work are hard to find, and after I recommended Robert Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker” in 2007, copies became difficult to find at a reasonable price. I swear I don’t have a secret stash of these books I like, though it would be a nifty way to make some cash on the side.
If you cannot get Wearing’s excellent book, I have a great alternative: Charles H. Hayward’s “Carpentry for Beginners” (Emerson Books). This little jewel slipped under my radar for many years because of the title. Carpentry? Why would I want a book about building a coal hutch?
Well as it turns out, we moderns are a bunch of unskilled dufuses (or should that be that dufi? I forget). What a mid-century Briton considers carpentry is more like what we would consider fine furniture building. (And what we call carpentry must be one notch above flint knives and bear skins, I suppose).
“Carpentry for Beginners” is an excellent book for building basic hand skills. Hayward covers it all, from basic sharpening to flattening a board, mortising, basic dovetailing, half-laps and even case construction. The book is entirely focused on hand work because it is assumed that the home carpenter wouldn’t have any machines lurking in the scullery.
What I think is brilliant about the book (and I hope to steal for my own future efforts) is how Hayward first teaches you the basic strokes: sawing, chiseling, boring, planing, marking, testing. Then he shows you how to combine these basic skills into dealing with real-life assemblies. There are entire chapters on “How to Make a Door,” “How to Make a Box” and “How to Make a Drawer.”
Then these are followed by informative single-page illustrations that walk you through many of the basic joints.
That’s the first 109 pages; the rest of the book is a walk through your swinging uncle’s house. Hayward shows you how to build swanky item after swanky item for your pad, including a television chair and some Danish un-modern tables. You can probably skip these chapters, except for the section on building a tool chest and workbench trestles.
Where do I find out-of-print books such as this? Try:
Now I’m off to troll these sites to buy up 100 copies of Graham Blackburn’s old books for next week’s blog entry.
P.S. Click here to read about other books I’ve recommended.
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Follow-up:
The Hayward book arrived and is definitely worth the $20 I spent. (I must have gotten going early.)
Mark Salomon’s trick of using Amazon’s Wish List as a place-holder has a risk. Two of the books on my wish list now say "Title no longer available." and NOTHING else. The title of the book is gone.
A number of years ago I put Wearing’s book on my Amazon Wishlist as a placeholder. I couldn’t afford the $80 (!!!) price for a new book that someone was offering but I didn’t want to forget it either. A few months later my wife used my Wishlist to buy me birthday presents and lo and behold– guess what showed up all nice and gift wrapped? After getting over the shock of the price I can now say that it was probably the best $80 I have spent in woodworking. Keep pushing it.
FYI To those that read this late – "Carpentry for Beginners" is now
unavailable for less than $70 on the popular second-hand book seller search
sites (you can still get cheap copies from bookshops in the UK, though
shipping will add substantially to your order). That’s normal, by the way –
don’t even think about ordering a tool or a book that Chris writes up unless
you see the post within about an hour after it goes up on the website.
Charles Hayward wrote a lot of books, and a fair number of the titles are
regurgitations/compilations of earlier titles. To that end, Charles
published a book titled "Cabinetmaking for Beginners". It hasn’t arrive
yet, but I fully anticipate it’ll have a lot of the content that’s in
"Carpentry for Beginners", and it’s still available cheaply.
For beginners in handtools I recomend Anthony Guidice The 7 essesntials of woodworking. It’s not an exhaustive encyclopedia but instead a good jumpstart into handtool use.
I don’t have that one. I have Marlow’s "A Cabinetmaker’s Treasury." I’ll look for it.
Chris
Good stuff. I can also recommend "HAND TOOLS-Their Ways and Workings" illustrated and authored by Aldren A. Watson. It is as good a primer on identification and usage of nearly every tool worth using in woodwork.
I found my near perfect hardbound copy at http://www.addall.com. This site queries ALL of the other book search engines and gives you access directly with sellers around the globe. Schweet!
always,
J.C.
One of my favorites is Fine Furniture for the Amateur Cabinetmaker by A.W. Marlow. Have you seen or read this one?