Reviews for The Woodwright's Guide: Working Wood with Wedge and Edge

The average rating for The Woodwright's Guide: Working Wood with Wedge and Edge based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-18 00:00:00 L Browning The knowledge and skills part of the book - great. The historical perspective and stories - great. The writing style? Mr. Underhill writes like he speaks. I think it works better when you can see him and the things he's doing. Sometime you have to read descriptions of how things are oriented spatially or the order of operations several times to work out exactly what he's doing. Still - the man is a legend as far as I'm concerned and his quirky nature is a big part of what sets him apart.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-15 00:00:00 Samuel Spalding Excellent book, and highly recommended. Talks about all manner of working wood with hand tools. It is organized generally from coarse, close to the forest work (starting with felling a tree) all the way through refined cabinetmaking. Along the way it covers log building, hewing timbers from logs, timber frame carpentry, sawing boards from timbers, joinery, woodturning, and furniture making. It also has several appendices: two with plans for dies to cut wooden screws (one by Andre Roubo and the other by Bergeron, both 18th century French authors), two workbench plans (one by Roubo again, and one by Hasluck), and finally two foot-powered lathes of the authors design. It is basically a history lesson for how things were before power tools came along (or a how-to manual for someone who want to do things the really old school way). It was sort of a slow read for me, but only because it covers so much information.