Book Recommendations
Basically, Lost Art Press.
I’m by no means an avid reader, but there a few hand tool woodworking books that I’ve read at least a couple times each and I recommend you read too.
I’ve linked each of the books below and if, like me, you’re in the UK they can be purchased from Classic Hand Tools:
The Anarchist’s Tool Chest - an excellent primer on the essential tools of a hand tool woodworker. It’s a useful check list for the types of tools you might want to consider when building out your kit, but you certainly don’t need everything to get going. Heck, you don’t need everything full stop. The author, Christopher Schwarz, explains the purpose of each tool and why it has its place in his tool kit. The book focuses on Western hand tools for the most part, with the occasional honourable mention of Eastern tools. If you’re either just starting out in the craft or have been creating saw dust for decades, I highly recommend this book. Plus, the fine folks at Lost Art Press provide a free PDF of the book if you’d rather not purchase a hard copy.
The Anarchist’s Workbench - if want to build a workbench while learning about the evolution of the woodworker’s workbench throughout history, then this is the book for you. Author, Christopher Schwarz, makes the case for his workbench design - heavily influenced by the French workbenches of the 18th century - and talks you through step by step on how to source the timber through to construction and outfitting it with hardware. As I said in my “An Apartment Appropriate Workbench Part 2”, I took inspiration from this book when designing my own workbench, which I will be building later this year. Again, if you’d rather not buy a physical copy, it is available as a free PDF download on the Lost Art Press site.
The Essential Woodworker - if you know nothing about hand tool woodworking other than you want to give it a try, then this book by Robert Wearing is for you. It will teach you the necessary skills and how to apply them. It’s filled with hundreds of hand-draw illustrations by Wearing himself and deserves to sit on the shelf of any budding hand tool woodworker.
Sharpen This - I recommended this book in my “The Art of Sharpening” post. Another by Christopher Schwarz, it is a no nonsense take that will enable you to become an expert at sharpening your plane irons and chisels. It’s cheap and can be read in a single sitting, so just buy it, you won’t regret it.
You’ll notice I have a couple other books in my stack, but I’ve not read these yet, so I’ll save them for a future book recommendations post.
In my next post I’m going to describe how I deal with every apartment woodworker’s arch nemesis - dust.
Fully agree on Essential Woodworker. The one technique book I keep going back to. I recommend purchasing the PDF so you can print pages to reference on the workbench. It helps when the image is not next to the text in the book.