Top five woodworking books
Like any other occupation of wood-crafting as well woodworking needs proper academic training to make it a successful career or developing an individual business planning on the same. The sphere of woodworking is so vast that it would not be possible to gather the entire knowledge during the short span of your graduate school’s woodworking classes. Additionally, practical classes are also not enough to know about different techniques of cutting, finishing, polishing, edging etc.
Moreover, along with having the woodworking techniques, every single woodworker must have the knowledge of identifying different woods, their texture, and additional features along with how they act in different weathers. You must know the various basic woodworking tools, as well as the advanced ones as the technologies are growing high, the tools related to woodworking, are also improving in order to increase the woodworkers’ comfort and save their valuable time while working on wooden projects.
It is not always possible to learn every single and minute thing while you are under any institutional training as the institute has a certain syllabus to teach the pupils and they won’t provide you more than that. So, here comes the importance of learning the leftovers from books and satisfy your personal queries on any woodworking-related matters. There are numerous suggestions of books on woodworking and carpentry that are very much useful for both beginners and advanced woodworking professionals.
If you want to have all of them in front of your hands you should go for buying them or hire them from your local libraries. In case of non-availability of such books offline, you can search them on the internet and read them from the same or can buy them from marketplaces.
Though all the woodworking books are more or less useful to every individual woodworker according to their requirements, yet some of them are really impressive and distinctive because of their descriptive discussions on every important minute matter of woodworking and also reserved top places in the trending carpentry book lists. Moreover, the authors of such bestseller books used to provide videos of basic and advanced woodworking techniques on different video platforms on the internet that would be useful for the DIY woodworkers also.
So, in this article, we will profile up the best five woodworking and carpentry books that will help the beginners to learn every nook and con of overall woodworking processes and projects and will elaborate their applications from the grassroots level. Our prior concern is to recommend such books that would grow interested in people toward woodworking and also teach the beginners and professional woodworkers perfect appliances of knowledge. All our picks are popular for their vivid demonstration of woodworking projects and machinery along with descriptions and images of the same.
Top 5 woodworking books
1. The Complete Book Of Woodworking
The complete book of woodworking is not written by any particular author but the result of a group of wise wood professionals’ hard works. However, we can consider Tom Carpenter the main author of the book, who has written numerous famous books on woodworking and carpentry and considered to be one the most comprehensive woodworking books overall. His dexterity in woodworking is reflected in every line of the book. This book is a profitable investment for both novice and expert woodworkers.
The 480 paged book contains almost 40 featured wooden project plans with useful diagrams and instructions. There are more than 1200 of step by step illustrations provided in the book for woodworkers of different skill levels. Beginners have been introduced with the basic procedures, guidelines, and tools of woodworking whereas the pros have been guided how to be more specific and achieve improvement in their particular genre of woodworking.
Along with that, the book consists of the expertise ideas of famous woodworkers of different periods and also their advice on what to do or not to with the tools along with valuable precautionary measures. To know even more, you can also visit a great woodworking blog called the edgecutter and help yourself with some guides.
2.Woodworking For Dummies
Woodworking for dummies by Jeff Strong who is simultaneously a writer, craftsman, and furnituremaker, is the most popular book recommended for beginner woodworkers. This is the book that is able to satisfy your every minute query about how to start up wood crafting and gradually turn it into a successful business. The author has elaborated every complex matter of woodworking in very supple and simple words that is conceivable to anyone.
From this book, you will get the idea of making fine wooden products whether it can be a simple bookshelf or a well-formed oak-wood dining table or a finely carved door. The book includes the concept of using different glues and adhesives, types of wood stains and colors, thinners and also provides the instructions of using basic woodworking hand tools and power tools etc. The Dummies book also makes you learn about different types of woods, their textures and how to make planks and lumbers along with their sanding and filling procedures.
3. Build Stuff With Woods
Build Stuff With Woods is a masterpiece by Asa Christiana who was the former chief editor of the Fine Woodworking Magazine. She was the first author who broke the concept that exclusive wood-crafting needs numerous numbers of extravagant hand and power equipment. She says all you need to make treasures from wood is good quality woods and of course the will of creating new things. According to her, working with woods is a form of fine art and the woodworkers are the artists who express the beauty of their minds on carved woods! If you have good wills to create you can do it by using basic tools too.
This book is considered to be an excellent guide to beginner woodworkers who are not able to spend too much on buying books and also do not gather too many devices for wood-crafting as well as unaware of how-to and where to start from in order to make their woodworking dreams come true.
This particular book provides a very few but useful featured woodworking projects in detail by using only a few basic equipment like a cordless drill, jigsaws, etc. There are about 14 wooden project illustrations in this book. The former projects are simpler whereas the further become complicated as along with the advancement of the techniques and technologies the tools began to get complexed and the applications of them are also complicated. In that case, the beginners can take the help of the known professional woodworkers to solve the issues with the complicated ones.
4. The Joint Book: The Complete Guide To Wood Joinery
The Joint Book: the complete guide to wood joinery by Terrie Noll is known as the best book on wooden joinery procedures. This book is an epic creation on the fundamentals and improved concepts of wood joineries. There are also three more books on joinery from the 20 years experienced furniture designer and all of them are real masterpieces for both novice and pro woodworkers.
In this book, the author illustrated the difference between a carpenter and a joiner based on the perspectives of their genre of activities. Such as, she said that a carpenter is able to work on anything that is related to woods whereas the joiners are the specialists who possess the skills of constructing wooden components like frames, windows, stairs, doors etc that means the products that include too many joineries in their bodies.
Needless to mention that perfect wooden furniture is constructed when each joint of the same has a good attachment. The Joint Book provides more than 70 different featured instructions on making various joints including mortise and tenon joints, dovetail joints, miter, and bevel joints along with the illustrative instructions of using fasteners, knockdown joints, etc.
5. Woodworking: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide
Woodworking: The complete step-by-step guide is again from the same author, Tom Carpenter who is also the writer of the very first book of our recommendations. This book consists of the techniques of more than 40 featured interior and exterior wood products and accessories in detail. The sentence construction of the book is extremely impressive and the practical images of the woodworking project plannings are vividly illustrated.
The book contains a total of 448-pages and each page is enriched with several easy-to-follow woodworking projects’ diagrams for building woodworking skills in different genres of wood-crafting and carpentry world. The book offers the concepts of making advanced and fashionable wooden products and also helps to know the process of selecting appropriate woods for particular wooden projects. The book of complete woodworking step-by-step instructs the woodworkers how to cut proper edges using different techniques, alignment of the holes on woods, sanding, filling, staining, and working on joineries.
The book is a complete solution for those who want to turn their woodworking hobbies to a successful career and also for the experts that want references for improvement in their works.
Points to consider before buying carpentry books:
- Look for the books of the renowned and experienced authors
- Content quality and quantity of the useful information
- Pocket friendly
- Choose a book according to your skill like if you are a beginner try a basic economics book at a preliminary stage
- Select books based on your wood-crafting genre
According to our suggestion among these above-listed books, the first and the fifth are the best picks for both beginner and professional woodworkers.