Copyright © 2010 Robert Wearing

256 pages

ISBN 
978-0-578-06044-6 (hard cover)

The Essential Woodworker --

Reading Robert Wearing's "The Essential Woodworker" was one of three lightning bolts that have struck me since I began woodworking.

The first shock was cutting my first perfect dovetail. Then there was the moment when I processed my first board entirely by hand. And the third came one afternoon while I was sitting in my chair and cracked open an English book that I had bought on a whim for about $5.

I read the entire book in one sitting (it took only a couple hours), but in that short period of time, Wearing assembled all the random puzzle pieces I had collected for years about handwork. He filled in all the missing details about dozens of basic processes, from laying out door joinery to truing up the legs on a table.