WWA Info Exchange

Another complete illustrated book by Taunton is dealing with hardware installation, hinges and such, I forget the title but a good reference book.

Quite welcome, Ray. I'm eager to hear your opinion of his writing style. As I said, that alone is worth the price of books I think. I inherited three volumes from my Father-in-law or I would have overlooked them myself.

This isn't as valuable a book as his first book.

Now that's no real criticism, because the first book is excellent and no mean target to reach again. My 4 star rating is simply because I have to make some sort of distinction.

It's hard to understand this book. Simply put, it's a list of designs (with enough detail to build them) of furniture pieces that very few people would ever want to make. Each design is taken to pieces, the design decisions are analysed,and there's a lot of discussion about why he chose to make them the way he did.
- but they're still ugly, and I wouldn't have any of them in my house !

This certainly isn't a book of designs to build. Neither is it a book of instructional manufacture techniques. My respect for Tage Frid is as a teacher of technique, not a designer, and I simply don't like the designs he offers here. Maybe it's an issue of fashion ? This is furniture of the American '50s and '60s, in a strange craftsman-made Eames crossover. Perhaps if you like Dean Martin and Martinis, then you'd like the furniture too.

Is this a useful book ? Yes, but only to a small audience. If you want to think very carefully about subtle design choices and how they affect ergonomics and long term usefulness of a piece of furniture, then this is a good book. The comparisons between the dozen different ways to make a pull-out table are a good example - few other texts will show more than one of these, let alone compare them, they just describe "an extendable table" and leave you thinking they're all equally good.

On the whole, I find the first book of this series to be one of the best cabinetry teaching books around, but this one is strangely lacking. It's useful (to some readers), but not so widely useful that I'd happily recommend it to others. If you want guidance on design, then I suggest you read Krenov first.

Was re-arranging my library today and ran across a couple other books you may not have or might want:

Beds; Jeff Miller (used this one to build the "throne bed" earlier this year) Very useful for structural advise.
Decorative Woodcarving; Jeremy Williams (Mango sent me this one ). Useful in technique and sharpening tips for those funny tools carvers use.