Woodwright's Companion: Exploring Traditional Woodcraft

by Roy Underhill

Book Overview

With The Woodwright's Companinon, Roy Underhill continues to demonstrate "how to start with a tree and an axe and make one thing after another until you have a house and everything in it." This volume features chapters on helves and handles, saws, the search for the whetstone quarry, crow chasers and turkey calls, hurdles, whimmy diddles, snaplines and marking gauges, candle stands, planes, window sash, riven shingles, and pit sawing. The final...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807840955
• ISBN13: 9780807840955
• Release Date: April 1983
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.6" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating #2

The second of Underhill's Woodwright books has some more practical information than #1 (Woodwright's Shop). If you have never read any of the series (there are 6 now) you need to know that he is stingy when it comes to actually describing how to make the tools. From a day-to-day standpoint, you will use very little of what is contained in here. This is more of an armchair woodworking book.

St Roy

The Woodwright's Companion is chop full of valuable information about traditional woodcraft. While some may skim the pages and see the sections about building hurdles or riving a roof, and feel the book is out of touch with today's woodcraft. That is far from the truth. Inside there are tons of information about saw sharpening, tree felling and using hand planes that any woodworker can use in today's woodcraft. The section on tuning up and using modern and wooden hand planes is worth the price alone. There have been a lot woodworking books written about the emergence and use of hand planes within the past few years but Roy originally wrote that chapter 26 years ago when he wrote The Woodwright's Companion.