The Ashley Book of Knots by Clifford W. Ashley is one of the best and most well known knot reference books. The subtitle “Every Practical Knot - What it Looks Like, Who Uses it, Where it Comes From, and How to Tie It” pretty much says it all. The book contains drawings and instructions for thousands of different types of knots. It starts with the humble Sheet Bend and ends with the Crossing Knot with many useful and obscure knots along the way, as well as splicing, matting and other related subjects. Full of anecdotes and historical footnotes, this is a profoundly good read. The book is so important it even has a Wikipedia entry. There’s a limited preview on Google Books should you still be on the fence. New price is about $55.00 on Amazon (it’s a big hardback) and used prices start around $35.00.

Via Amazon [What’s This?]

I can’t believe we haven’t covered The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander G. Weygers yet! The Complete Modern Blacksmith is a volume containing three books written by Weygers, “The Modern Blacksmith”, “The Recycling, Use and Repair of Tools” and “The Making of Tools” published by 10 Speed Press.

The book contains a trove of material on setting up a low cost blacksmithing forge and blacksmithing basics, the making of blacksmithing tools, the making of just about every other kind of tool, such as chisels and screwdrivers — all the way to drills and milling cutters. It is the only book we’ve read that covers how to make a Watts-type square hole drill! Then there’s the woodturning lathe and tools. Anyway it’s a big mess of fun projects and with great detail and beautiful drawings by the author. Very “70’s” if you know what I mean.

The book has a list price of $19.95 and is available on Amazon for $13.57 and from other sellers for even less. Even if you never intend to do a bit of blacksmithing, the book is an entertaining read.

Via Amazon
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Workholding in the Lathe by Tubal Cain (The nom de plume of the late Tom D. Walshaw) published now by Special Interest Model Books is a good small book dealing with an important subject for those of use with a lathe in the shop. The book is aimed at the model engineer and home shop machinist with a smaller lathe.

The book covers work between centers, faceplate work, general chuck work, the self centering and independent jaw chucks, “unusual chucks,” and collets, and has two other chapters on steady rests and lathe alignment.

What makes this book so useful is that it shows examples of all sorts of workpieces being chucked. Often you are faced with a puzzle when working on (and especially reworking) a part in the lathe. This book shows dozens of setups on odd workpieces as well as going into the construction and forces in various chucks and chucking methods. The books is somewhat dated but for most work, that isn’t going to matter in the least. The section on “lantern” type chucks is great for those that need to rework screws. I’m going to build one for myself soon!

The book is available on Amazon and from tons of other resellers. I paid $3.95 for my used copy a few years ago and it seems you can get copies used online for around $7-$15.

Via Amazon

Necessary Numbers: An Everyday Guide to Sizes, Measures, and More by Mary Blocksma may not make you the “Cliff Clavin” of your local pub, but it will give you a broad overview of all types of numbers. An expanded version of her earlier book Reading the Numbers: A Survival Guide to the Measurements, Numbers, and Sizes Encountered in Everyday Life, this one covers a variety of diverse numbers including zip codes, highway route numbers, pencil leads, bar codes, SS numbers, clothing sizes, and — as the title says — “more.”

A new paperback costs $12, but you can find used copies for around $4, or “swap” for the earlier version.

Necessary Numbers [Barnes & Noble]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Reading The Numbers [PaperBackSwap]

The Art of Japanese Joinery by Kiyosi Seike is one of those books that shows how far one can take wood joinery as an art, not merely as a functional process. The book starts with the history and philosophy of Japanese architecture as it relates to joinery, then (at least in my edition) there are 57 pages of pictures of wood joints, 9 of which are examples as found in Japanese buildings. The remainder are simple pictures of joints between two pieces of wood. The joints range from the simple scarf joint to the insanely complex joint such as the “Mechigai-koshikake-kama-tsugi” - lapped goose-neck mortise and tenon joint with stub tenons and “Kanawa-tsugi,” mortised rabbited oblique scarf joint. Some of the joints are truly puzzle-like in construction.

The text continues with a  chapter on the functions of Japanese joinery, then a chapter on “Tsugite,” splicing joints and finally “Shiguchi,” connecting joints, both of which have drawings showing the construction of the joints with hidden lines for further clarification and obfuscation.

All in all it’s a great read for those seeking to complicate their woodworking and push the boundaries of the craft! It’s available on Amazon for a reasonable $18.21 and around $5.00 on the Internet generally.

Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Mechanical Details for Product Design by Douglas C. Greenwood is a simple book of different, well, mechanical details that you could find useful if you’re designing a tool or other mechanism. The book contains lovely two-page spreads of mechanical detail ideas from the pages of Product Engineering magazine, about 340 pages’ worth. The first chapter is typical charts and graphs as relate to spur gear design, bending, geometry, etc. Then we move on to the meat — each two-page spread typically starts with a header such as “Clamping Devices for Accurately Aligning Adjustable Parts,” “6 Ingenious Jobs for Roller Chain,” “Dimensions for Hand Grips,” “8 Stops for Panel Doors,” “Assemble Sheetmetal with 8 Interlocking Fasteners,” “Getting the Most from Screws,” “4 More Ways to Prevent Backlash” — you get the idea.

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Lee Valley has four discontinued books on sale (they bought remaindered stock) for $6 or less each. The two that I find most interesting, pictured above, cover building workshop workstations and power-tool joinery (the other two are about garden design and orchids). Stock is limited.

Building Workshop Workstations [Lee Valley]
Building Workshop Workstation Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Power-Tool Joinery [Lee Valley]
Power-Tool Joinery Via Amazon [What’s This?]

I picked up a used copy of Making & Using Your Own Tools and Workshop Accessories (ISBN 9780830600328) a couple of weeks ago, and it’s a good cheap read. The book is a series of reprinted projects from “School Shop” magazine, originally published by Tab Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield. The book focuses on making tools and accessories in the typical high school metal and wood shop. Many of the projects are of the typical type found in other books, such as making a sander, hammer, etc., but there are many gems to be found in this 360 page tome. It’s the only book we’ve found with instructions for making a magnetic vee block! So if you love projects or need some inspiration, get a copy. It’s especially valuable if you happen to be a shop teacher.

The book is out of print, but as is typical for most TAB books the used prices are cheap, from 35 cents to $10. I paid $1.50 for my copy.

Special thanks to Shorpy for use of the great photo of a 1921 middle school shop class.

Used Copies Via Amazon

This books tracks the 11-month construction of one Steinway Concert Grand, K0862, from the cutting of lumber in British Columbia to the final tuning and finishing. I found it fascinating to follow all the handwork and craftsmanship Steinway still uses in the various rooms of its old factory in New York. It takes approximately 12,000 parts and up to 450 people to assemble a concert grand.

The paperback version of the book is $11; a Steinway Concert Grand will set you back a bit more (~ $100,000 new, and $50,000 to $200,000 or more for a used model).

Via Amazon [What’s This?]

The Complete Book of Pocketknife Repair: A Cutler’s Manual by Ben Kelley is a short, somewhat flawed, basic book on the steps you need to take to restore an old pocketknife to its former glory. The first two chapters cover tools needed for basic repairs, including special hand tools specific to knife repair. Chapter 3 is a complete how-to guide on restoring a Case pocketknife that is seemingly beyond repair, although the author replaces the blades with new ones.

We get a two-page chapter on buffing, then a chapter on blade repair which oddly misses the reshaping of the tip. Following that are chapters on handle repair and dying and “jigging” bone for handles. You can skim over a couple of throwaway chapters on maintenance, heat treating, etc. The final section of “general information” has great details on angling blades and “cutlering” (bending the blades so they fold together neatly) blades on an anvil.

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Set the Wayback machine for 1984 and read “Auto Body Repair” by Duenk, Williams, and Brooks. The book is a comprehensive manual for auto body repair as done in the 1980’s. The book has it all, starting with an overview of the construction and assembly of the auto body. Then we move to chapters on body repair tools and shop equipment, use of hand tools and techniques including specialty tools. Frame straightening and underbody repair are covered along with welding, brazing and heat shrinking. Minor and Major repairs are covered along with the types of accidents that produce the need for such repairs.

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Gem Cutting, A Lapidary’s Manual by John Sinkankas is one of those great books that provides a solid introduction and guide to a craft, in this case lapidary work. “Lapidary” is a fancy way of saying (gem)stone cutting. The book covers many topics, starting with sawing gemstones to rough size, both with professional and DIY equipment, including the use of very large saws for cutting apart boulders. Then the book moves on to grinding, tool selection, maintenance, selection as before. Later chapters cover lapping, sanding and polishing.

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While the Carroll Smith collection may sound like a range of crockery from Sears, it’s actually a series of five books which are the testaments of race preparation. Smith was a racing legend who passed away in 2003 after working with everything from an MGTF to a Formula 5000 car, and was the team leader for Ford’s all-conquering GT40 program. A part of the vast knowledge he accumulated in his years is presented in Engineer to Win, Tune to Win, Prepare to Win, Drive to Win, and the Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners, and Plumbing Handbook.

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Understanding How Components Fail by Donald J. Wulpi is one of those rare texts that takes a complex subject and makes it understandable to the layman while preserving that complexity. The book is, as the title suggests, an examination of the types of failures that mechanical components undergo and how to examine those failures. The book covers distortion failures, fractures of so many types, stresses, wear, corrosion, and high-temperature failures.

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The Amateur’s Lathe by L.H. Sparey is possibly the best book for the home shop machinist on getting the most out of your smaller lathe. The book was first published in 1948 but it’s held up well over the years.

The first few chapters cover what a lathe is, choosing a lathe, typical and useful things to look for in purchasing one, and setup. The book then has a chapter on accessories both bought and shop-made with engineering drawings of several useful accessories. Grinding lathe tools, drilling, and other lathe operations are covered. The chapter on work holding is incredibly useful with many setups for faceplate work and mandrel use. Then we get a chapter on boring, another on taper, crankshaft, disk, and ball turning. Screwcutting is covered in its own chapter. Milling, shaping, and grinding are covered along with the drawings for a simple dividing head. As if that’s not enough, the final chapters cover lapping, metal spinning, spring winding, rubber and leather turning, and production techniques.

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Lee Valley offers 6 reprinted volumes of vintage Bull of the Woods cartoons. Drawn by J.R. Williams, the cartoons come from his real-life experiences working in an Ohio machine shop (several cartoons are shown in that link to a Popular Mechanics article). The cartoons highlight the hazing, injuries, management issues and other day-to-day hilarity found in the early 20th century machine shop. It’s excellent reading at the end of the day or while sneaking a rest behind the planer. The books serves as a history of sorts as well, showing machines that no longer exist in most machine shops and practices that only the most experienced old timer machinists know.

Bull of the Woods [Lee Valley]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

While researching the DuraGear Flexible Shaft Screwdriver, I saw a reference to this book by Witold Rybczyski and wound up getting a copy through PaperBackSwap. It’s fascinating (well, for me at least, but then I really enjoyed the “History of Engineering” course I took lo those many years ago in college) account of when and where the screwdriver and screw were invented. No mention is made of the illusive laser-guided screwdriver, but it does offer lots of other interesting historical information starting with Archimedes and progressing through Peter L. Robertson* and beyond.

Given that you can pick up a copy for $5 or less, I would say this is a good and economical read.

*including his invention of the Wrench-Brace (apparently an early multi-tool combining a brace, monkey wrench, screwdriver, bench vise, and rivet maker); if anyone has any information about this device, I would be interested, as my web searches for details have been futile.

Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Street Pricing [Google Products]