More From the Cult of Charles H. Hayward
Good books on hand work are hard to find, and after I recommended Robert
Wearing's "The Essential Woodworker" in 2007, copies became difficult to find at a
reasonable price. I swear I don't have a secret stash of these books I like, though
it would be a nifty way to make some cash on the side.
If you cannot get Wearing's excellent book, I have a great alternative: Charles H.
Hayward's "Carpentry for Beginners" (Emerson Books). This little jewel slipped under
my radar for many years because of the title. Carpentry? Why would I want a book about
building a coal hutch?
Well as it turns out, we moderns are a bunch of unskilled dufuses (or should that
be that dufi? I forget). What a mid-century Briton considers carpentry is more like
what we would consider fine furniture building. (And what we call carpentry must be
one notch above flint knives and bear skins, I suppose).
"Carpentry for Beginners" is an excellent book for building basic hand skills. Hayward
covers it all, from basic sharpening to flattening a board, mortising, basic dovetailing,
half-laps and even case construction. The book is entirely focused on hand work because
it is assumed that the home carpenter wouldn't have any machines lurking in the scullery.
What I think is brilliant about the book (and I hope to steal for my own future efforts)
is how Hayward first teaches you the basic strokes: sawing, chiseling, boring, planing,
marking, testing. Then he shows you how to combine these basic skills into dealing
with real-life assemblies. There are entire chapters on "How to Make a Door," "How
to Make a Box" and "How to Make a Drawer."
Then these are followed by informative single-page illustrations that walk you through
many of the basic joints.
That's the first 109 pages; the rest of the book is a walk through your swinging uncle's
house. Hayward shows you how to build swanky item after swanky item for your pad,
including a television chair and some Danish un-modern tables. You can probably skip
these chapters, except for the section on building a tool chest and workbench trestles.
Where do I find out-of-print books such as this? Try:
bookfinder.com
abebooks.com
alibris.com
powells.com
Now I'm off to troll these sites to buy up 100 copies of Graham Blackburn's old books
for next week's blog entry.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Click here to
read about other books I've recommended.
A project to 
Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): The makers of the previously-posted 