Getting Started in Woodworking

Here is an up-beat and accessible introduction to woodworking. You'll learn basic skills while building attractive and useful furniture. Aim Ontario Fraser, a former Fine Woodworking editor, employs a friendly tone that will inspire you and give you confidence -- especially if you have little or no experience using tools. Each project teaches specific skills, which can be applied later on, and results in a piece of furniture that you will be proud to have made.

Among the projects you will learn to build are a rustic coffee table, two-shelf bookcases, and a funky outdoor easy chair. Throughout the book, Fraser explains in detail the key operations or techniques that are needed to build the project. Helpful photos and drawings guide you along the way.

About the author
Aim Ontario Fraser began her woodworking career during high school while working in a state-of-the-art boatbuilding shop. Since then she has been a professional woodworker and boatbuilder. A former editor of Fine Woodworking, she has written dozens of articles that have appeared in woodworking magazines and WoodenBoat. She live in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Introduction

Tools for Woodworking

Materials

Simple Handmade Box

SKILL BUILDERS:
Sharpening
Clamping
Accurate Crosscuts
Paring with a Chisel
Using a Handsaw
Using a Block Plane
Drilling Holes
Outdoor Easy Chair

SKILL BUILDERS:
Crosscutting Multiples to the Same Length
Countersinking for Screws and Plugs
Installing and Trimming Plugs
Rustic Old-World Coffee Table

SKILL BUILDERS:
Making and Using a Beading Tool
The Pocket-Hole Screwed Joint
Clamping Up a Wide Panel
Making an Accurate Circular Saw Guide
Rounding Edges with a Plane
Classic Bookcase

SKILL BUILDERS:
Router 101--Rabbeting
Template Routing with a Straightedge
Making a Dado Cutting Jig
Top-Drawer Lateral File

SKILL BUILDERS:
Ripping on a Table Saw
Building a Crosscut Sled

Resources

Glossary

Index

Wood is an antidote to the stresses of modern life. From the rough-hewn beams of an old barn to the elegant simplicity of a handmade box, we're drawn to wood. Luxury car makers know this and accent the interiors of their highest-priced models with bird's-eye maple and walnut burl.

Wood is a material with a wholly human scale. Trees are part of our lives, and we watch them through the seasons. We understand how they live and grow. Their wood is not too hard to work but is strong enough to accomplish almost monumental human tasks such as building bridges and shoring up hillsides, yet delicate and soulful enough for making a cradle. Unlike the heroic scale of steelmaking or the hurtling electrons in a microchip, the processes of woodworking are familiar in scale and easy to accomplish using tools that have changed very little over the centuries.

Woodworking is satisfying on many levels. It's a physical activity, with lots of lifting, carrying, planing, and using your arm, leg, and back muscles. It's work that connects you with real life, not with a screen. It's working in a medium where nothing is a given. Each piece of wood is different, and you must see how it acts and work with it. This requires a great deal of creativity and resourcefulness.

Doing woodworking connects you with the real world in a new way. As you learn to use tools and materials, you'll have a new understanding of the way things work. You're able to shine the light of knowledge on some of the mysteries of everyday life, such as why floors squeak (the joints move), the reason drawers stick in the summer (high humidity causes wood to swell), and why the coat rack fell off the wall (the screws were not long enough to anchor the weight in the soft drywall).