Woodworking for the serious beginner

There seem to be two schools of thought on how beginners should approach woodworking: one dictates learning fundamentals and getting lots of practice, and the other requires buying lots of expensive tools. Here, the authors cover some fundamentals but lean heavily toward the latter school. McClure is a professional woodworker and Philpott-Jones is a beginner (her repeated statements to that effect and remarks about the difficulty of woodworking detract from the text). The first half of the book is devoted to buying and the second half shows how to build a workbench and router table. The section on safety is excellent. Better choices for libraries serving beginners include Peter Kom's Working with Wood (Taunton, 1993) and the three-volume Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking (Vol. 1, LJ 2/1/86). Only the most comprehensive collections should consider this title.‘Jonathan Hershey, Akron-Summit Cty. P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.