New Donations
Various Authors

Review by Mark Gezella – November 2005

We received numerous books and magazines last month thanks to the generous folks at Woodcraft.  An entire stack awaited me last time I visited the store.  Glen was liberal with his donations, offering quite a variety of books from his sale shelves, as well as a few store copies and others that were procured elsewhere.  I reviewed these items, passed notes among the board members, and arrived at a group agreement that we could improve our library.  I decided to take this opportunity to make you aware of them in case you're interested in checking out some "new" material.

For the carvers among us, we have a couple of new entries.  Chip Carving Patterns is authored by Wayne Barton and provides a great introduction to chip carving, as well as being a supplement for anyone already adept in this craft.  I'm sure most of you are familiar with Mr. Barton, as he ranks among the best in the world of chip carvers.  He lives in Oak Park, Illinois with his wife and children, where he also runs the Alpine School of Woodcarving.  He is born and raised right here in the Midwest, though he took formal training for the art in Switzerland.  He's authored several books on chip carving, and also promotes his own brand of knives and sharpening stones.  I believe much of his product line can be found in the Woodcraft store.  Chip Carving Patterns is a great source to tap regardless of whether you need basic instruction on chip carving, or are looking for additional patterns or some ideas on how to ply these techniques to different types of woodwork.  This can be great embellishment for furniture, house molding, and many other crafts items.

Another new entry along the same vein is Celtic Designs.  This is strictly a patterns book; no real instruction, but a great source of illustrations for those that may be interested in carving a Celtic knot, spoon, or some variant.  It is authored by David James, and although I had known about the book for years, I didn't know anything about the author.  I did a little investigating and found he is quite an expert on Celtic art.  He spent his early years as a studio potter, then later became editor for a Celtic magazine, wrote books on a variety of Celtic subjects, then basically chose to exemplify the entire Celtic scene with his lifestyle.  His focus of late is to offer designs spawned from the basic principles of Celtic craft.  These can be incorporated into a host of media; e.g., leather, clay, jewelry, and wood.  Quite inspiring!

Aside from the carving theme, we now have a valuable resource that comes to us from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Fittingly entitled Wood Handbook, it contains virtually everything you may need to know about wood; physical characteristics, mechanical/structural properties, densities, locale, and on and on.  I'm sure many may find a text of this sort rather droll, but thumbing through it really blew my mind!  It contains a staggering amount of information about wood, compiled by a consortium of experts that knew virtually everything there was to know about the material back in the '50s.  It would be interesting to research how much more has been discovered about our wonderful medium since then.

Some other's we've added made me chuckle.  Super Simple Bird Houses You Can Build contains a vast array of clever abodes for our winged friends - I counted no less than 30 different styles amongst the pages.  While many are basic, sort of silly houses and hutches, there are some that you might be inclined to have in your own back yard.  The book is no slouch with regard to tool usage either.  It touches on hand tool basics, but quickly shifts to brutes like compound miter and radial arm saws.  It also provides sound information on wood selection, workability, and gluing characteristics, as well as sizing charts for various kinds of birds.  Perhaps Mr. Balcer can check this one out and give us his expert opinion on it?!

I chose these from the group to give you an idea of what's new in the library…just enough to (I hope) tease you into gravitating towards the cabinets at the next meeting.  There are many more books covering several unique topics, so there should be enough to satisfy most everyone's interests.  But if they don't, let me know.  I'm always open to suggestions on what you think might improve our library.  These books will be available for check-out at the next general membership meeting.