How To Make Your Own Furniture

Sharp tools, sound timber, and a bench to work at: Henry Lionel Williams's handbook of home cabinetmaking teaches the beginner everything needed to build furniture that lasts.

How to Make Your Own Furniture is a complete practical course for the amateur. Williams starts with the workspace itself - where to stand a bench, which tools to buy first, how to keep an edge on them - then moves through the choice of timber and fittings, the cutting and joining that hold a piece together, and the patient business of finishing. A final chapter on design shows how to work out proportion and construction for pieces of your own.

The advice here assumes no machinery beyond what a keen amateur might own, and the diagrams are drawn to be worked from rather than admired.

This edition features:

• A complete beginner's course in home cabinetmaking, from fitting out a workspace to finishing a piece properly
• Practical guidance on choosing timber, boards, fittings and adhesives, and on what a first tool kit needs
• Full instruction in measuring, cutting and joining, illustrated with clear working drawings throughout
• A chapter devoted to finishing alone: filling, staining, waxing and polishing to a hard-wearing surface
• A closing chapter on design, teaching proportion and construction so readers can plan pieces of their own