Product Description

An invaluable reference for woodworkers, crafters, furniture designers, and home enthusiasts, this comprehensive guide helps readers discover one of our most beautiful natural resources and learn how to use and appreciate this wonderfully versatile material. The Encyclopedia of Wood, New Edition provides an A-to-Z directory featuring more than 150 of the world's most popular woods, with information on growth rate, distribution, key characteristics, working properties, and commercial uses. Each entry includes a detailed color photograph to show the tree's unique grain, pattern, figure, and color, providing a valuable visual resource for selecting timber. An informative introduction explains the anatomy and life cycle of trees as well as the process of producing boards and veneers, and examines essential conservation issues. Perfect for use in a range of applications, this richly illustrated guide is a one-stop resource to the remarkable world of wood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #302289 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780816061815
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
Anyone who likes to tramp through the woods, reads the Arbor Day Foundation newsletter, or shops at home-and-garden centers can probably identify a fair number of common trees: maples, oaks, pines, and the like. Some folks can even tell a red maple from a sugar maple, a black oak from a pin oak, and a southern yellow pine from a Norway pine. However, there's a tremendous difference between identifying a living tree and identifying a piece of wood. Living trees offer lots of helpful hints: bark color, bark texture, foliage, seedpods, height, and overall shape. Seasoned, board-cut pieces of wood offer none of these hints, and that's why this specialized identification guide is so useful.

Thirty pages of introductory material, richly enhanced with outstanding maps, photos, and illustrations, explain tree anatomy, tree growth, wood grain, logging practices, conservation, and the various processes for seasoning and preservation of wood. This material is well written and beautifully presented. The real treasure, however, is the "Directory of Wood" section, which contains entries on 150 "top commercial timbers" arranged alphabetically by scientific name. Each one-page entry begins with a four-by-eight-inch photographic reproduction of the specific type of wood. The quality of the color photographs is so high that readers will be tempted to run their fingers over them to feel the wood's texture. Along with these photos are brief descriptions of growth patterns, appearance (the wood, not the living tree), properties, and uses. Closing out each entry are a small world map showing growth location and a small chart indicating structural features, such as impact resistance, bending strength, and crushing strength.

The Encyclopedia of Wood is a beautifully crafted identification guide for practicing woodworkers and others whose professions depend on wood. Libraries whose constituencies include such individuals should give it serious consideration for purchase. Art A. Lichtenstein
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Aidan Walker spent 10 years as a professional carpenter, joiner, and cabinetmaker, after which he became editor of Woodworker magazine, the U.K.'s leading journal of woodworking craft and design. He is now a freelance writer on wood and furniture-related topics. Bill Lincoln has spent 30 years in the wood trade. He is the author of The Art and Practice of Marquetry and The Complete Manual of Wood Veneering. Luke Hughes studied Chinese and tooka degree in the history of art. He then switched to law before deciding to commit himself to woodwork. He now produces classically influenced furniture for such prestigious London stores as Liberty's and the Conran Shop. Lucinda Leech is a well-established furniture designer.

Customer Reviews

Succesfull coffee table-book, failed encyclopedia
The strength of the book is the fine quality of the printing, the good color photographs and the enthousiasm of its makers, who obviously love crafting things of wood. This certainly is an attractive coffee table-book which may well inspire those who browse through it into making better use of wood than before.

As an enyclopedia it certainly does not make the grade. Obviously nobody with a botanical background was involved here. On page 20 is a remark about 'apetalous' trees that if ever I decide to award a price for the most-nonsensical-botanical-statement-ever will be a strong contender. The writers failed to pursue a consistent way of writing botanical names. Glancing through the book I note various errors in the history of the use of wood.

In addition the wood pictures, although of the same general size that is cute in "Identifying_Wood" by Aidan Walker (see there), a book derived from this, are pretty smallish on this big page size. I feel uncomfortable about some of the pictures which appear hardly typical of the woods they supposedly represent, and indeed some were replaced in the little book. As "Identifying_Wood" is not a bad book but unsuited for identifying wood, so is this "Encyclopedia_of_Wood" unsuited as a reference.

I don't want to give the impression that it is riddled with errors (I have seen much worse), but it falls well short of the level of, say, "The_International_Book_of_Wood" (1976) let alone of an encyclopedia.

P.S. I do hate the clumsy square shape. Obviously it was not meant to ever come off that coffee table: it decidedly would sit awkward on a shelf among real reference works.

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Second edition (dec 2006)

It is interesting to compare the 2005 second edition with the 1989 first edition. Firstly, the second edition has changed from the rather clumsy square shape to a more convential shape that will fit better on the bookshelf. Secondly, the second edition has retained the heart of the book, the descriptions of 150 woods, but has shifted from presenting two woods per page to one wood per page. This means that more of the book is taken up by these descriptions, and this has been compensated for by deleting the parts on crafted wood, which actually were among the more attractive parts of the book. What has been retained are the parts explaining trees and the structure of wood. These were rather riddled with errors in the first edition, and this does not appear to have been improved. The botanical information is even more out of date than the first time round (botany is on the move).

The 150 woods presented here are not quite the 150 of the first edition, although mostly they are. The presentation of these woods is much affected by the large color pictures: something like a third of the page is taken up by a color photograph of a longitudinal surface. Picture quality is fairly good, but perhaps a little on the dark side. Not always so good is the selection of actual woods to be photographed. It is not possible to understand how anybody could have mistaken the wood on page 46 for Kauri, short of complete blindness. But this is hardly the only failure to match the wood to the description. The descriptions themselves do not appear to have been changed, although the new woods of course do represent new content. This new content has been provided by Nick Gibbs, who also authored the "Real wood bible". The error on pau rosa in the latter book has been incorporated here as well. It is safe to say that all the errors on the identity of wood that are traditionally present in books aimed at the woodworker have been faithfully perpetuated here, yet again.

It is curious to note that although the "Real wood bible" (or its British equivalent "Wood handbook") share an author and a photographer, and were produced by the same publishing group as the present book, there is a quite notable difference in picture quality. The pictures in the "Real wood bible" are distinctly better in quality and more faithful to the original wood than in this book.

All in all, the second edition is not really an improvement on the first edition, losing the information on crafted wood (which made this a good coffee-table book), adopting a color scheme for the world maps that is a lot less clear, etc. Everything that was bad about the first edition appears to have been retained, except the small size of the wood pictures. The second edition loses a star.

For anybody looking for only the one book to own the "Real wood bible" is a much better choice. As the selection of woods is slightly different between these two books (and different pictures appear to have been used throughout) it may be worth owning both, anyway.

Good intro book for the beginner, but....
the major strong point of this book, as mentioned by others, are the nice color photos. the biggest complaint I have is with the small number of species listed - only 150, while other books have around 230 or more. this book excludes many of the woods i have used or have in my "shop." although there are many nice pictures in this book, the most important pictures, which are the samples of the different woods, are extremely small and are not always typical in appearance. take cherry for example. there is a nice section near the end that further discusses some of the more "important" or significant woods, such as oak, maple, yew, lignum, rosewood, lime, beech, etc. some sections, such as the discussion on man made boards, are a complete waste of pages in my opinion. I hardly think that a person buying a book about local and exotic woods needs any info on MDF. the only reason i gave this book 3 stars intead of 2 is because there is a pretty good amound of text for each wood listed, though other better books have the same feature. my advice is to save yourself some time and money by buying a book with info on more species

Great coffee table book. Nice photos. Basic information.
While the book could have been a little more dense it was a good read overall. I would have liked to have seen more focus on North American hardwoods, but that aside the book was very informative. About 150 different woods are described in detail with acompaning pictures. There is also a nice section on fine furniture. This book is an excellent introduction into the world of wood working and would make a fine gift for anyone with even a passing interest in that direction.