Fine Woodworking's Book Notes

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Happy Reading,
The Management

The Complete Custom Closet by Chris Gleason.
Popular Woodworking Books, 2006.
$24.99; 128 pp.
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Many companies sell custom-closet solutions but this book from woodworker and author Chris Gleason shows how to build them yourself. Gleason gives step-by-step directions for projects in places like the master bedroom, the hall, or the laundry room. This, however, is more than a how-to book; it is a source of ideas and reasonably basic, practical methods for the design of closets.

You can't judge a book by its cover. But in the case of this book you can judge it by the introduction: “This book is intended for beginner and intermediate woodworkers who are interested in designing and building custom closets at a reasonable cost,” writes the author. I agree.

I found the writing style pleasant and informative. I would consider this an excellent intermediate book falling between carpentry and woodworking categories. Some techniques he describes would be difficult for a beginner but there’s more than enough information for an intermediate woodworker.

While Gleason provides useful techniques and examples of various built-in projects, he leaves many of the details up to the reader to modify or improve upon. “Because each individual's lifestyle and storage needs are unique and because we're usually working with spaces that defy a one-size fits all approach,” he writes.

While I don’t need to build closet organizers for my house right now, this book is more than adequate for someone tackling such projects.

About the Reviewer
Joe Branch is a longtime carpenter and electrical engineer who started fine woodworking about three years ago. The Philadelphia native now lives in northern Delaware and is a member of Montgomery County Woodworkers' Guild.

Making Woodcuts and Wood Engravings: Lessons by a Modern Master by Hans Alexander Mueller.
Dover Publications, 2006.
$12.95 paperback; 112 pp.
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This book has a certain charm that separates it from other instructional guides on woodcut and wood engraving techniques. It’s a reprint of a 1945 text called How I Make Woodcuts & Wood Engravings. While other books I have read gather a consensus of opinion and present it in a dry and clarified manner, Mueller’s book gives one man’s views and serves as a source of inspiration rather than a manual of technique.

The book is full of personal opinions gained from a lifetime of experience. Some were very insightful. This book strives to capture the mindset and motivations of the woodcut artist and wood engraver while providing the reader with a crash course in techniques.

In light of this, I would not advise a first-time woodcut artist to use this book by itself as a technical manual. It provides a wealth of motivation, but it’s not organized in a way that allows quick consultations for technical direction. Use it as a way to get your feet wet. It will give you an idea of what techniques and motivation are required if you want to attempt a woodcut or wood engraving.

As an experienced woodcut artist myself, I mostly enjoyed this book as a view into the mind of an artist from a different era, whose approach to the medium is quite different than my own.

Mueller comes from a background of book illustration. His style and opinions clearly reflect this. His focus is very illustrative and traditional. You clearly won’t find current trends in this book. Neither should you expect a broad range of illustrations. Mueller has included many beautiful woodcuts and wood engravings, including many examples of various techniques, but he left out work by other artists. You’ll only find samples of his prints. If you read this book, I strongly advise you to look at the work of some other artists as well.

About the Reviewer:
Vincent Edwards studies printmaking at Indiana University. The 25-year-old has been woodworking in one form or another over the last two years. He started with woodcuts (see the example of his work, left) and then branched into furniture making. He expects to finish his bachelor’s in fine arts degree this May.

Popular Woodworking Pocket Shop Reference by Tom Begnal.
Popular Woodworking Books; 2006.
$14.99 spiral-bound; 240 pp.
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The Popular Woodworking Pocket Shop Reference written by Fine Woodworking associate editor Tom Begnal is a great resource. It’s a revised edition of Begnal's 1997 book. You can go to it to find just about everything you need to know whether you’re starting a project, in the middle of construction, or finishing it.

To review this reference book, I wanted to see how many times I would go to it while working on projects. Then I read it from cover to cover. I found myself looking up topics before a project even began. For example, I checked out how the wood was going to react to seasonal changes and found out what the wood’s moisture content should be before use.

The amount of information in this little book is just as important as the tablesaw. If I ran into questions while building, I would look through the book and find what I needed. Some of the topics seemed a bit elementary to me, but that only shows it would be a great resource for all woodworkers from the home hobbyist to the everyday cabinetmaker.

About the Reviewer:
Thomas Henry recently started the Montgomery County Woodworkers' Guild that meets on a monthly basis at the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop facility. In addition to woodworking, he’s a project manager for a printing firm and father of two young children.

A Turner’s Guide to Veneer Inlays by Ron Hampton.
Schiffer Publishing, 2002.
$14.95; 64 pp.
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This is an informative how-to book on embellishing turnings with circular, oval, or banded veneer inlay. Ron Hampton shares concrete information to complete most of the projects but a critical read-through reveals some detracting issues.

Hampton explains inlaying on flat or mostly flat surfaces well. Projects show you how to add inlays to objects such as a box lid, a platter, or the bottom of a bowl. I was disappointed, however, with information on adding inlay to a surface of compound curves. Routing a uniform depth into a curved surface is tricky. I hoped the book would share a clever solution, instead Hampton just warns us to continually adjust the bit depth. Without better instruction, these projects might be difficult for many readers to complete.

In addition, some of the book’s photos are dark and poorly lighted. The book’s text could have also used some judicious editing. Most of the picture captions are repeated completely in the text. It seemed as if I was reading the entire book twice.

As a longtime turner, I have two safety concerns as well. He describes using a parting tool, advising readers to tightly hold the tool, but should have explained how to cut clearance on either side of the blade while making the cut. This keeps the tool from jamming in the wood.

The final project, adding banding to the wooden rim of a glass vase, also worried me. When the author turned the excess wood off the glass, he only applied duct tape to the glass where it touched his steady rest. Even though he was wearing a face shield, it would be a safer procedure to tape the entire vase to contain the glass should it shatter.

Other than these criticisms, I feel this book is worth the money and contains good information on the author’s techniques.

About the Author:
Wood-turning veteran Richard Lukes is a founding member of both the Glendale Woodturners Guild and the Los Angeles Woodturners Association. Lukes is a retired CNC machine tool salesman. He also invented and developed the Stabilax skew chisel device and one of the first ultra-thin parting tools which he formerly sold from his company, Beech Street Tool Works.

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Roman Woodworking by Roger B. Ulrich.
Yale University Press, 2007.
$85.00; 400 pp.
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Long before modern tools, glues, and the shop gizmos we almost take for granted, the Romans were doing some pretty interesting woodworking. They built wooden bridges with clear spans over a hundred feet. They constructed formal buildings with elaborate paneled ceilings. They sawed veneers and cut them into complex patterns, and developed furniture forms with long-lasting appeal. Romans used wood as a primary material, but you might never have realized it considering how little has lasted to tell the story.

Roman Woodworking has chapters on Roman tools, joinery, and specifics on all aspects of building technology from foundations to roof framing. The author, Dartmouth classics professor Robert B. Ulrich, also covers wheel making, furniture techniques, the typical kinds of wood they used, and where they found it. Ulrich sleuthed the story from a number of sources including surviving Roman buildings, ruins, gravestone carvings, and frescos from Pompeii and elsewhere. He also examined the few surviving metal and wooden artifacts, along with the writings of astute observers such as Vitruvius.

What surprised me was how little the story has changed. Roman wood trades were specialized and highly developed, not too different from today. Some made only couches and beds, others did inlay, carpentry, cut combs, or made wheels and wagons. They improved or developed a variety of tools such as wood and iron infill planes with high bedding angles to work exotic timbers like ebony or thuja, a citrus wood.

They had lathes, drills, saws, socketed gouges and chisels, and layout tools that are similar to modern versions. They had fish and bull-hide glue (the highest quality coming from the genitals and ears) that was stronger than the wood itself. And they understood steaming to bend wood into round containers just as the Shakers did centuries later.

I found two gems. One was a good explanation of the classic forms and proportions that guided the design of all aspect of Roman building — ideas the Romans freely borrowed and reinterpreted from the Greeks, Etruscans, and others. There’s a whole section devoted to proportioning doors and the various elements that surround them, but it’s a photo of a coffered ceiling that will inspire me for a long time. I might work it into a cabinet, or a panel of a door, or the facade of a something else--a thoroughly modern design borrowed from a clever craftsman of centuries ago.

About the Reviewer:
Garrett Hack, a Fine Woodworking contributing editor and furniture maker, studied architecture and engineering at Princeton University.

The Wooden Bowl by Robin Wood.
Stobart Davies LTD, 2007.
$49.50, 192 pp.
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All wood turners should read this book. I have been a wood turner for over seven years and never realized how far the art has changed and progressed over the years.

This book covers the history of wooden-bowl turning beginning with Roman times, through the medieval era, through the mid 17th century when glazed pottery almost made bowl turning a lost art, and finally the 19th century in Europe. This book not only covers a vast amount of information about the bowls themselves but the lathes used to turn them. Believe me; the lathes of old are not at all like their modern-day counterparts. The early bowl gouges that the author describes are also very interesting and quite different than those used today.

Robin Wood has done a superb job of researching all aspects of bowl turning, bowl design, and the types of wood used in turnings around the globe. The book is filled with wonderful paintings and photographs, plus many diagrams of different styles of old world lathes.

I would have preferred one additional chapter covering the 20th and 21st century bowl turning and equipment. Since this book would make an excellent coffee-table book, a little more information on today’s methods would give the non-wood turner a look at how far the art of bowl turning has come over the past 2,500 years.

It is obvious that the author spent many years gathering the data brought forth in this book. His travels to various parts of the world to witness first-hand the bowls and equipment used in the past says a lot about him and his love of the art. I commend him for a job well done and I appreciate the education this book gave me.

About the Reviewer
George Lucido is a retired aerospace engineer and member Diablo Woodworkers. He has been working with wood for almost forty years and has turned over 200 wooden bowls since he bought his first lathe seven years ago. Lucido focuses on segmented turnings inspired by Native American works and shows his pieces in local galleries.

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