The more you know about the nature of the wood you use, the better your own work will be. These 41 articles from Fine Woodworking's classic era tell you what you need to know about the raw material of your craft.

Learn how to buy, dry, store and mill lumber. Youll read about which species are good for which jobs, and how to design joints that accommodate woods seasonal swelling and shrinking.

Customer Reviews from Amazon

What it is: 20 or 30 articles reprinted from Fine Woodworking magazine, between the 1970s and early 1980s. The articles cover a range of topics, only a few of which deal with drying lumber on the scale of a beginning-to-mid amateur.

A lot of the topics are of interest: spalted wood, a bit of the theory behind wood's material properties, essays on a few favored species, turning a trunk into lumber, and even logging with a horse. Don't laugh - I heard of one guy who makes a very good living using his horse to remove unwanted trees from ecologically sensitive areas.

What it's not: an organized discussion of any one topic. Maybe you'll find a few good grains in this collection, but a lot of chaff. The few articles that spoke to my needs were too short to give a discussion that I'd find worthwhile. For example, I won't be pouring a concrete slab for my drying barn any time soon. I do want to understand the relative merits of drying logs whole vs cut into planks, and I want some idea of how long to dry wood of various species and sizes under different conditions - topics that aren't addressed.

//wiredweird

Like other Fine Woodworking books it's basically a collection of articles from their magazine. But they are very interesting articles. I enjoyed reading it and learned alot about how to cut and dry lumber myself. Plenty of info on air drying and solar kilns but I wished it revealed the mysteries of a large kiln. I would like to see a drying table with humidity control and more on stress relieving wood.

Book is a compilation of articles on growing timber,sawing methods using a variety of mill types as well as how to stack and air dry lumber. It also includes a detailed section on kiln construction for the hobbiest. Different types of kiln plans are included including solar, and dehumidification types. Overall, an inexpensive resource with a lot of usefull information for the serious wood hobbiest that harvests, saws and drys their own lumber.

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