The Practical Woodworker: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Course in Working with Wood

by John Freeman (Photographer), Stephen Corbett

A comprehensive coure on all aspects of woodworking for bothe the novie and the accomplished woodworking enthusiast.

Genres: Nonfiction, Woodwork, Reference, Education

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
For other authors of this name, see:

John Freeman - English poet and essayist, 1880-1929

John Freeman - Book critic, Editor

John Freeman - British politician, diplomat, broadcaster, 1915-2014

Reviews

[Koen Crolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not necessarily a bad source of information unless it's your only source of information.
The list of tools awkwardly straddles the boundary between a hand tool shop and a ``modern'' woodworking shop, but it's clear Corbett doesn't really know his hand tools: a few saws are shown, but no distinction is even made between crosscut saws and ripcut saws, let alone the large variety of specialised saws you'd want to know about, and a handful of hand planes are mentioned, but no attempt is made to explain how to make them usable. (Not that the list of power tools is perfect: it mentions the circular saw and the battery-powered circular saw (neither of which I would even consider to be woodworking tools), and the chop saw and even the radial arm saw, but not the table saw. I guess DeWalt wouldn't loan them one; almost every power tool listed is a DeWalt, and is photographed with their logo clearly visible.)
The techniques the book discusses are billed as beginner and advanced techniques, but it's really just techniques you'll figure out if you spend a few minutes looking at tool in a speciality shop and beginner techniques. A lot of time is devoted to making hand-crafted furniture look like store-bought, mass-produced furniture, which is less than interesting.

Still, some of the projects are a decent source of inspiration (even if I wouldn't actually want any of them in my house as-is), it has a lot of pictures, and only some of the information is actually wrong. Worse books have been written.

(I read this book in Dutch because it was a gift. Don't read it in Dutch; Dutch has a smaller woodworking vocabulary than English (for various reasons), so occasionally nuances are lost or the translator uses words that nobody has said out loud since the 1600s. If you're serious about woodworking you'll need to learn a lot of English jargon just to able to buy decent tools anyway.)

[Edgars Zaķis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't really follow the plot, but the characters were well developed and interesting.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great reference book for the aspiring woodworker. I like that it doesn't just give you a few plans to build things... it shows you, in detail, how to choose and prepare the wood, how and when to use certain tools, different types of joints and when they are appropriate, and different finishes that can be applied. And then, of course, there are the plans to build things. Which is cool, because they used a technique in one that I like and would never have thought of myself. So even if I don't use any of the other plans in the book, that section was valuable to me as well.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

skimmed it, might read more. Picked it up at Borders for $5+, looks like a good basic primer for wood working. I think I'm most interested in learning how to carve wood, to which this book devotes a few pages. Kind of cool to create a totem pole for the yard.

[May Ling]

Full marks since, it fulfills its tasks of educating a person on working with wood in the most straight forward manner.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good overview on woodworking. Covers the basics.