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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.
