How-to & Graphics

Everyday Woodworking: A Beginner's Guide to Woodcraft With 12 Hand Tools

Everyday Woodworking: A Beginner's Guide to Woodcraft With 12 Hand Tools

$19.99
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Get started with simple, useful, handcrafted woodworking projects for everyday people--with only 12 basic tools!

Lots of people want to try woodwork, but they get intimidated by dangerous power tools and difficult techniques. Good news: there are lots of ways to work with wood and anyone can get a few tools and start making projects.

Everyday Woodworking starts at the very beginning--with wood. How can this common material make everything from furniture to houses? What makes it so strong? Why does it break? More importantly, what can you do to a piece of wood? Sometimes we cut it with a saw. Other times, we split it with an ax or shave it with a knife. This book explains why we choose each tool and how to pick the right cut for any project. As Rex likes to say: "Trust me, it's not hard."

Once you get a few tools and learn some simple techniques, you'll start making things right away. You'll begin with a simple mallet and some wooden wedges and then advance to splitting green logs into usable lumber.

Next you'll pick up a knife and a drill and after just a little practice, you'll be making things you can give to your friends; things they'll actually use:

  • A wooden butter knife
  • A desk organizer
  • A few pieces of sturdy furniture
  • Sawhorses
  • A small workbench
  • Each project is shown step-by-step with the beginner in mind. The projects are simple but not primitive. Everyday Woodworking will give you skills that you can build on as you grow as a craftsperson.

    How to Wrap Five Eggs, Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging (USED)
    How to Wrap Five Eggs, Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging (USED)
    How to Wrap Five Eggs, Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging (USED)
    How to Wrap Five Eggs, Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging (USED)

    How to Wrap Five Eggs, Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging

    $165.00
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    Traditional Japanese packaging is an art form that applies sophisticated design and natural aesthetics to simple objects. In this elegant presentation of the baskets, boxes, wrappers, and containers that were used in ordinary, day-to-day life, we are offered a stunning example of a time before mass production. Largely constructed of bamboo, rice straw, hemp twine, paper, and leaves, all of the objects shown here are made from natural materials. Through 221 black-and-white photographs of authentic examples of traditional Japanese packaging—with commentary on the origins, materials, and use of each piece—the items here offer a look into a lost art, while also reminding us of the connection to nature and the human imprint of handwork that was once so alive and vibrant in our everyday lives.

    First Edition for the United States published by Harper and Row in 1967, after the original Japanese edition of 1965.  Written by Hide Yuki Oka, foreword by George Nelson, photography by Michikazu Sakai.  Traditional elegant designs for packaging ordinary objects in Japan reflect their time and culture.  4to, 203 pages, full page illustrations in exquisite black and white, dust jacket with protective cover, glossy white with blind embossing on front hardcover, bump to right lower edge, interior fine.  VG/VG.

    The Secret Language of Maps

    The Secret Language of Maps

    $14.99
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    A highly visual exploration of diagrams and data that helps you understand how maps are part of everyday thinking, how they tell stories, and how they can reframe your point of view, from Stanford University's world-renowned d.school.

    "This book is the ultimate legend to mapping all kinds of data."--Jessica Hagy, Webby Award-winning blogger of Indexed and author of How to Be Interesting (In Ten Simple Steps)

    Maps aren't just geographic, they are also infographic and include all types of frameworks and diagrams. Any figure that sorts data visually and presents it spatially is a map. Maps are ways of organizing information and figuring out what's important. Even stories can be mapped! The Secret Language of Maps provides a simple framework to deconstruct existing maps and then shows you how to create your own.

    An embedded mystery story about a woman who investigates the disappearance of an old high school friend illustrates how to use different maps to make sense of all types of information. Colorful illustrations bring the story to life and demonstrate how the fictional character's collection of data, properly organized and "mapped," leads her to solve the mystery of her friend's disappearance.

    You'll learn how to gather data, organize it, and present it to an audience. You'll also learn how to view the many maps that swirl around our daily lives with a critical eye, aware of the forces that are in play for every creator.

    Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts (USED)
    Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts (USED)
    Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts (USED)
    Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts (USED)

    Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts

    $65.00
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    Clare Leighton (1898-1989) was an English/American artist, writer, and illustrator, best known for her wood engravings. During the late 1920's and 1930's, Clare Leighton visited the United States on a number of lecture tours. In 1939, at the conclusion of a lengthy relationship with the radical journalist Henry Brailsford, she emigrated to the US and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Over the course of a long and prolific career, she wrote and illustrated numerous books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land. During the 1920's and 1930's, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial, and urban, Leighton portrayed rural working men and women. In the 1950's she created designs for Steuben Glass, Wedgwood plates, several stained glass windows for churches in New England and for the windows of Worcester Cathedral, Massachussetts.

    Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts, published in 1932, is the second book in the "How to do it" Series. The book features tipped-in photos of Leighton demonstrating wood engraving techniques, along with stunning full-page illustrations of her own work, as well as examples from fellow engravers, such as Eric Gill, Gwendolen Raverat, Blair Hughes-Stanton, and Agnes Miller Parker, among others.

    London: The Studio Ltd.; New York: The Studio Publications Inc., 1932; 1st edition. No dust jacket; black and cream patterned paper covered boards with black cloth over the spine; corners bumped; spine creased, top of spine pulled but not torn; smudges on front cover; endpapers tanned and lightly foxed; hinges weak; all tipped-in photos intact; text clean. G