I made a pass through some local antique stores today on my way home from work and found an interesting book. Interesting that is if you have galloot like tendencies. Unfortunately the trip did not turn up any interesting tools. The book is the 1902 edition of Benchwork in Wood by W. F. M. Gross. The book was orignally printed in 1887. It has coverage of hand tools, techniques, wood, and jointry. It is going to be a very interesting read.
The book is divided into 3 main parts- Bench tools – Covers all of the tools and provides recommendations on a set of basic tools needed to work wood.
- Bench work – Covers how to measure, cut, chisel and plane wood. Provides exercises
- Elements of wood construction – Information on lumber, joints, etc..
Probably the most interesting thing is that I found the book was scanned and is available on line in the Stanford Library. Here is the link. You can download the book for free in PDF format. It is 2.9Mb. Hopefully, this will be of interest to some of the folks here. Let me know what you think.
I’m hoping to get some work in the shop in this weekend. Perhaps I will begin the restoration of another plane. Also, I have a bunch of Redwood to mill in preparation for making some chairs. We will see if I get there given it is mothers day weekend and I am leaving Sunday afternoon for a week long business trip.
-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov
6 comments so far
WayneC
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6044 posts in 995 days
posted 931 days ago
Actually there is a ton of free books that you can access through google. Here is a link to free woodworking books that you can download in PDF format.
http://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=woodworking&asbrr=1&sa=N&start=0
I found the 1912 Book. Furnature Making – Advanced Projects in wood. It is full of measured diagrams of arts and crafts furnature. 71 pages…
-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov
Ethan
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751 posts in 1072 days
posted 930 days ago
Great resource, Wayne! Found the book you mentioned and downloaded it. I forsee a small digital library building here.
I KNEW that 500 GB external drive would come in handy…
-- Ethan, http://greystonegreen.blogspot.com/
frank
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1503 posts in 1104 days
posted 930 days ago
Hi Wayne;
—-great source of material here at mentioned site! I had meant at sometime in the past to link the site here….but I get so busy, glad to see you found it and thought to do what I fell short of.
Great book, google may be good, but I still like the pages that are written on leaves of wood. Great find you found!
GODSPEED,
Frank
-- --frank, NH, http://frank.wordpress.com/
WayneC
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6044 posts in 995 days
posted 930 days ago
I agree Frank. I do not like digital books as well as hard copy. I belive if I find something I really like I will hunt for it on ebay or amazon and get a printed version.
-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov
PanamaJack
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4447 posts in 975 days
posted 930 days ago
Found it on Amazon and bought last night. I did “scan” the digital copy first and decided it was in fact worth it. I agree I like the hard-copy better. Thanks for the tip WayneC!
-- Carpe Lignum - Seize The Wood,
WayneC
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6044 posts in 995 days
posted 930 days ago
I went back and used the link in the first comment and it came back with all woodworking books including partial books. Click on “full view books” on the search bar to show the ones that have the entire book on-line.
http://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=woodworking&asbrr=1&sa=N&start=0
-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov