Taunton's Complete Illustrated Guide to Routers Author: Visit Amazon's Lonnie Bird Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1561587664 | Format: EPUB
Taunton's Complete Illustrated Guide to Routers Description
About the Author
Lonnie Bird, a professional woodworker specializing in period furniture, was a contributing editor to American Woodworker. He taught woodworking at the university level and now operates his own school in Dandridge, Tennessee.
- Series: Complete Illustrated Guides
- Paperback: 233 pages
- Publisher: Taunton Press (October 3, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1561587664
- ISBN-13: 978-1561587667
- Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 9.1 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Overall, I liked this book. It's right on and serves as a great introduction if you are new to routers. It's well laid out and has great chapters on the different types of routers, what to look for when purchasing. etc. It gives a nice comparison to aid you in determining which of the three basic types of routers is for you (If you haven't bought one yet). The book has super chapters on Basic Operations and the Joinery section is quite good, too. If you are completely new to routers or if you have garnered information piecemeal from reading posts in woodworking forums, this book walks you through the basics very nicely and completes the picture on topics like motor options, adapter sleeves for collets, guide bushings, how much wood to take off for the first cut, how to plunge, etc.
He provides great insight that only an accomplished router user and woodworker can: Variations in bit shank diameters, horizontal versus vertical panel-raising bits, using woodworking double-sided tape instead of carpet tape and safety. I truly like how he routinely brings safety to the forefront and doesn't just have it set off in a chapter by itself where it is presented and then forgotten. He also shows how to make easy safety devices and jigs without much effort.
A couple of caveats about the book so that you won't have any surprises if you decide to pick this up: The author expects you to have some basic knowledge about woodworking. There are sentences such as this one in the first chapter, "The plunge router is the best choice for routing mortises..." He doesn't explain what a mortise is as he expects you to know.
This book has the best illustrations I have ever seen in a book of this type. I probably own about fifteen books on routers and jigs that use routers. Most have similar content. This book has most everything the others have with better illustrations.
What sets this book apart is the quality of illustrations and that it has some information that none of the others cover. The issue covered here and in none of my other books is how to use the router as a prelude to hand woodworking.
For dovetails, no router jig can match the versatility a skilled woodworker can obtain by hand with a Japanese saw and a good set of chisels, but even a person making hand dovetails can save time and do some prep work with a router for some, but not all, dovetails.
I took a class on woodworking essentials, including hand dovetailing, at Lonnie's woodworking school in Dandridge, TN. Many of the time saving techniques he taught in his class are in this book. In his class a router was not used to make dovetails, but but was used to remove excess wood where convenient so that time was not wasted in getting down to the hand work. I might add that I had a week to read and look at the book at his school before buying it. I added it to my collection of router books because of the quality of the book. I have no other relationship to the author or publisher of this book.
I strongly recommend this book and also Lonnie's school. He makes museum quality work by hand but knows how to use machines where they make sense. Although I was not one of the best students in his one week class of seven students, the dovetails I made were better than some I have seen as illustrations in books on how to hand cut dovetails.
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