Your First Workshop : A Practical Guide to What You Really Need (Getting Started in Woodworking) (Paperback)

A bewildering variety of tools, clever marketing copy, and lack of knowledge can lead even the most determined new woodworker to make many unnecessary purchases, causing frustration or retreat. Written for true beginners, Your First Shop offers inspiration and encouragement, guiding readers toward smart tool choices by providing realistic, reliable information. Best-selling author Aimé Ontario Fraser started working with wood in high school, and has taught extensively in workshops and classes since. Your First Shop brings that experience to readers. Woodworkers of every taste can find a shop style that works for them in one of the book’s four sections: The Essential Shop, The Basic Shop, The Efficient Shop, and The Well-Rounded Shop. Topics include how each tool is used and what it is used for. The book also offers extensive advice on choosing a location for the shop, maximizing available space, and planning for future expansion.

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Getting Started in Woodworking: Skill-Building Projects that Teach the Basics (Paperback)

While this book was written for any beginning woodworker, it has a special appeal for women. The projects, based on popular items found in fashionable stores and catalogs, are attractive, relatively simple to build, and have obvious appeal. And they are far less expensive to build than to buy. Each project is graded from simplest to most difficult, with each one teaching a set of skills that build on the skills learned in previous projects. “Skillbuilder” features in each chapter explain in detail the key operations or techniques being used to build the project. The book is written in a friendly, encouraging tone and includes not only a wealth of practical information, but also humorous tales of woodworking misadventures aimed at relieving beginners’ worry about making mistakes. Over·300 color photos and black-and-white drawings are included.

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