Working this way can produce beautiful results, but is it the best method for woodworking in the 21st century?In Hybrid Woodworking, author and Internet woodworking star Marc Spagnuolo offers a more efficient approach that combines the strength of power-tool and hand-tool techniques. The end result: You save time and effort while producing furniture that still has that stunning handmade look.The Hybrid SystemHybrid Woodworking will show you which machines and power tools are best for the grunt work of furniture making. It will explain which hand tools are essential for fine-tuning. And best of all, it will demonstrate techniques for working flawlessly and efficiently with every machine and tool in your shop.Making beautiful furniture can be immensely gratifying. By adopting the hybrid woodworking system you can get to that satisfying end result with less effort while enjoying every step along the way.

    King of the whittlers.' Sunday Telegraph Barn The Spoon, as he’s affectionately known is a rare master craftsman in the art of spoon carving. In this book he generously shares his extraordinary skill, gentle philosophy and his life’s work – designing and carving beautiful spoons that are both a joy to use and hold.The simple, ordinary spoon is part of our everyday lives, intimately entwined with the acts of eating and socialising, from stirring our first cup of coffee to scraping the last bit of pudding from the bowl. And who doesn't like to spoon in bed? Barn’s spoons will take you on a journey into the new wood culture, from understanding the relationship between wood, the raw material and its majestic origins in our trees and woodland, to the workshop and the axe block, and into your own kitchen. Barn will show you how to use the axe and knife, from how they should feel in your hand to honing the perfect edge when carving your own spoons. Featuring sixteen unique designs in the four main categories of spoon – eating, serving, cooking and measuring spoons, Barn takes you through the nuances of their making, how each design is informed by its function at the table or in the kitchen, and the key skills you will learn – such as creating octagonal handles, manipulating grain patterns and mastering bent branches. Beautiful photography will inspire and act as a blue-print to help perfect your technique.

    We live in a time when only a few gifted and dedicated teams of designers can produce buildings that approach the beauty of these that eighteenth-century carpenters created all by themselves. What went wrong? In this fascinating tour of our buildings and our social history, Jonathan Hale examines the historical moment in the 1830s when builders and architects began to lose their sense of surety about what they were doing. He explores the societal pressures that turned buildings from pure efforts at expression into structures laden with symbols. Most important, he uncovers - in terms the lay reader can easily understand - the principles that animate great architecture, no matter what its style or period. In The

    The seeds of Witold Rybczynski's elegant and illuminating new book were sown by The New York Times, whose editors asked him to write an essay identifying "the best tool of the millennium". The award-winning author of Home: A Short History of an Idea and, most recently, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century, Rybczynski once built a house using only hand tools. His intimate knowledge of the toolbox, both its contents and its history, serves him beautifully on his quest.One Good Turn is a story starring Archimedes, who invented the water screw and introduced the helix, and Leonardo, who sketched a machine for carving wood screws. It is a story of mechanical discovery and genius that takes readers from Ancient Greece to Victorian Glasgow, from weapons design in the Italian Renaissance to car design in the age of American industry. Rybczynski writes an ode to the screw, without which there would be no telescope, no microscope, in short, no enlightenment science. The screwdriver, perhaps the last hand tool in a world gone cyber, represents nothing less than the triumph of precision. One of our finest cultural and architectural historians, Rybczynski renders a graceful, original, and engaging portrait of the tool that changed the course of civilization.

    In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness-buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being.A Handmade Life carries Coperthwaite's ongoing experiments with hand tools, hand-grown and gathered food, and handmade shelter, clothing, and furnishings out into the world to challenge and inspire. His writing is both philosophical and practical, exploring themes of beauty, work, education, and design while giving instruction on the hand-crafting of the necessities of life. Richly illustrated with luminous color photographs by Peter Forbes, the book is a moving and inspirational testament to a new practice of old ways of life.

    The computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsman’s work. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world. The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.

    What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for objects born, not made.Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical.Soetsu Yanagi is often mentioned in books on Japanese art, but this is the first translation in any Western language of a selection of his major writings. The late Bernard Leach, renowned British potter and friend of Mr. Yanagi for fifty years, has clearly transmitted the insights of one of Japan's most important thinkers. The seventy-six plates illustrate objects that underscore the universality of his concepts. The author's profound view of the creative process and his plea for a new artistic freedom within tradition are especially timely now when the importance of craft and the handmade object is being rediscovered.

    They will learn how to prepare wood surfaces before burning, how to transfer a design or pattern, and how to select materials for burning, coloring, and finishing a project. Methods for burning onto wood, leather, paper, bark, and antlers are detailed alongside ample pictures of pyrography on the various materials that will inspire novice woodburners. Numerous techniques are also discussed, including solar, negative, relief, engraving, torch, and hot wire. The most difficult area for burners--how to realistically create animal fur, feathers, and eyes--is addressed.

    You won't have to wait for a helper or pass up a job that seems too difficult to do alone. And if youre a homeowner working on your own house, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.Written by a builder with 30 years' experience, Working Alone is packed with more than 50 innovative tips and techniques. You'll learn how to handle nearly every aspect of home construction alone, from foundation layout to raising walls to building decks.This book, the only one of its kind, offers a myriad of unique solo solutions. A perfect example is the problem of bringing a large sheet of plywood up a ladder. Even with a helper, this is a difficult and dangerous task. But if a large C-clamp is fastened to one end of the plywood, it's easy to pull the sheet up the ladder from behind. Clever techniques like this will have you solving common problems safely and efficiently.

    Over 450 photographs, drawings, and diagrams reveal in exquisite detail the hows, whys, and how-to's of the traditional craft of guitarmaking, all accompanied by fascinating historical and technical notes. A comprehensive bibliography; a list of tools, materials, and supply sources; and a full index complete this uniquely authoritative reference -- and essential acquisition -- for guitar and craft enthusiasts, woodworkers, and students of instrument making everywhere.

    At last! A leather working book for amateurs by a top professional.Valerie Michael guides the leatherworker through techniques and projects, showcasing the very best of her knowledge and experience.After a thorough presentation of each of the key techniques - such as finishing edges, paring and hand stitching, making pockets, attaching studs and straps and decorating surfaces - there are ten projects, suitable for developing levels of skill, from belts and wallets to quilted work and three different types of leather bag.Not only is this book an ideal introduction to a centuries-old craft, but its comprehensive treatment of materials, tools and techniques makes it an invaluable work of reference.

    Irish makes it easy for beginners to learn the creative craft of woodburning in Pyrography Basics. All that aspiring beginners need is this book and an inexpensive woodburning tool to start adorning wood, gourds, leather, paper and more with beautifully burned images and patterns. The author provides a thorough introduction to basic tools, materials and techniques. Readers learn how to set up a practice board to experiment with strokes and settings before moving on to working projects with confidence. Six skill-building projects provide step-by-step exercises in using temperature, time, layering, and texturing to create artistic tonal values.

    The future lies in the hands of infiltration expert Solid Snake, who must defeat the terrorists or die trying.

    It’s so easy to get started in this relaxing and rewarding hobby. All you need is a knife, a twig, and this book!We’ve assembled a team of 12 leading woodcarvers to bring you a complete starter guide to whittling. They present 24 easy whittling projects that you can make in just a weekend, complete with step-by-step instructions, how-to photographs, ready-to-carve patterns, and helpful tips.Start off with fast and fun projects that build confidence and teach fundamental carving techniques, like a simple flying propeller or a 5-minute owl. Then move on to create whittled wonders like a musical frog or a slingshot. We show you how to whittle complex designs in easy steps, so that you’ll soon be carving attention-getting favorites like chain links or the classic ball-in-a-cage.

    There isn’t a single thing I’ve done, or experienced,” said Grant Wood, “that’s been even the least bit exciting.” Wood was one of America’s most famous regionalist painters; to love his work was the equivalent of loving America itself. In his time, he was an “almost mythical figure,” recognized most supremely for his hard-boiled farm scene, American Gothic, a painting that has come to reflect the essence of America’s traditional values—a simple, decent, homespun tribute to our lost agrarian age. In this major new biography of America’s most acclaimed, and misunderstood, regionalist painter, Grant Wood is revealed to have been anything but plain, or simple . . . R. Tripp Evans reveals the true complexity of the man and the image Wood so carefully constructed of himself. Grant Wood called himself a farmer-painter but farming held little interest for him. He appeared to be a self-taught painter with his scenes of farmlands, farm workers, and folklore but he was classically trained, a sophisticated artist who had studied the Old Masters and Flemish art as well as impressionism. He lived a bohemian life and painted in Paris and Munich in the 1920s, fleeing what H. L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie” of small-town America. We see Wood as an artist haunted and inspired by the images of childhood; by the complex relationship with his father (stern, pious, the “manliest of men”); with his sister and his beloved mother (Wood shared his studio and sleeping quarters with his mother until her death at seventy-seven; he was forty-four). We see Wood’s homosexuality and how his studied masculinity was a ruse that shaped his work.Here is Wood’s life and work explored more deeply and insightfully than ever before. Drawing on letters, the artist’s unfinished autobiography, his sister’s writings, and many never-before-seen documents, Evans’s book is a dimensional portrait of a deeply complicated artist who became a “National Symbol.” It is as well a portrait of the American art scene at a time when America’s Calvinistic spirit and provincialism saw Europe as decadent and artists were divided between red-blooded patriotic men and “hothouse aesthetes.” Thomas Hart Benton said of Grant Wood: “When this new America looks back for landmarks to help gauge its forward footsteps, it will find a monument standing up in the midst of the wreckage . . . This monument will be made out of Grant Wood’s works.”