What's On Your Woodworking Bookshelf?

When I was in college in Boston, I would take a walk to the public library about once a week. I found myself thinking about how much information – on any subject – was at my fingertips. It was generally overwhelming. At that time, I was studying music composition (I eventually earned a Bachelor’s in Music Composition), so I would peruse those books first.

I still get caught in the gravitation pull of libraries. I make it a point to find the public library in any town I might find myself in for any length of time. You learn a lot about a place in a short amount of time in the local library. If you’re lucky enough to meet a librarian that has been there forever, the stories they tell are worth the effort of finding the library.

I asked Jim Tolpin what were some of his all-time favorite woodworking books that he has on his shelves. Here’s what he said: The number one, life-changing book for me was The Wheelwright’s Shop by George Sturt. He pulls you into the life of craftsman/artisans of an era when the craftsman (not the tooling) were the repository of hundreds of years of skills and an intimate relationship with the medium – wood and iron.

Jim’s other favorites are:

A Museum of Early American Tools by Eric Sloane. This is the book that ignited my first spark of interest in woodworking as a craft – a craft I could picture myself doing.

Foxfire (series), edited by Eliot Wigginton. Sloane got me started and the Foxfire books kept me going by showing me the tools in the hands of living craftspeople who were still engaged in building fascinating, challenging things.

The Complete Woodworker, edited by Bernard E. Jones. This book was written well before tools had cords on them and is all about handwork. I was happy to find a large number of layout tricks that I had never seen before in any book or magazine – tricks that I now use on a daily basis.

Hand Tools-Their Ways and Workings by Aldren A. Watson. This book gave me a huge head start in figuring out how to use some of the more exoteric planes (such as the Stanley tongue-and-groove plane). Watson even shows us how to hold the most prosaic of tools – a pair of pliers – so you can easily open and close them as if they were on springs.

There is more to come as we continue to ask what other woodworkers have on their library shelves.

Jim Stack, Senior Editor Popular Woodworking books