Thread: The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years Review

I got Volume I and II, Tools and Techniques, last week and have pretty much had them by my side or in my hands ever since, so I just wanted to give a brief review.

Long story short: Awesome.

The guys at Lost Art Press have done an absolutely fantastic job of compiling all of these articles. I believe that when they set out to publish these, their goal was to include information for both the greenest beginner and the most grizzled, seasoned pro, and I think that they nailed it.

There is everything in there from the whats and whys of saw filing, cutting angles, basic plane use and technique, chisel selection, material selection, etc. The "getting into hand tools" material that we all need at some point, and should probably all brush up on from time to time.

But I know that a lot of us (and I humbly and reservedly include myself in that lot...) are not necessarily beginners, so this is really where I think they did a great job. There are numerous articles that are dedicated to "Things They Don't Teach You" and similar lines of thought. This is where you're going to learn stuff like:

- Just how truly valuable a scratch stock is
- How to work a moulding on a curve
- Different approaches to certain things when you don't have the perfect tool
- Approaches to working stopped joinery that you wouldn't otherwise have thought about
- Cutting beading on a spindle
- Cutting tapered mouldings on a tapered leg (this one is awesome)
- Sharpening profiled blades

And a lot of other stuff. I know we all have some of those head scratching moments where we wonder "How did the old guys do this by hand?", and there is definitely some of that information in this book.

So it gets the official Luke J Maddux stamp of approval.

The only con I can drop right off the top of my head is that they are not indexed. I would really like to be able to just look up everything they have to say about rebate planes and go from there, but you can't. The closest thing they offer is a searchable .pdf on their website that lists the names of all of the articles. A pretty good compromise that probably saved them weeks of indexing and, in turn, reduced the price of the book.

Books are available to preview here:

https://lostartpress.com/products/th...-hayward-years

Also, Volume III on Joinery is being shipped very soon. Exciting.

To clarify, I have no affiliation with these guys and don't get any free stuff (and I've tried...). I just really think these are great books from a great publisher that could be beneficial to many.

I also highly recommend The Essential Woodworker by Robert Wearing. Between this and the Hayward books you're pretty much ready to get to work.

Cheers,
Luke