Illustrated Cabinetmaking: How to Design and Construct Furniture That Works (Fox Chapel Publishing) Over 1300 Drawings & Diagrams for Drawers, Tables, Beds, Bookcases, Cabinets, Joints & Subassemblies

This is an extremely well written, insightful and concise overview of best practices for cabinet making. It features a large amount illustrated sample pieces of furniture, highlighting for each both the core design principles as well as the technical key elements. This is not a step by step project book. It expects the reader to apply knowledge already gained elsewhere. Instead, it breaks down the key elements of a very large number of varied pieces and thus allows you to come up with your own variations of these "best practice" designs. Highly recommeded and one of the best books on making furniture which I've seen. Don't expect a "do step 1, then step 2" style cooking book. This is more like a timeless text book which may easily stay with you throughout your woodworking career whilst technologies and fashions change.

The book is great. It starts with details of hows and whys, and then is mostly exploded diagrams of a wide variety of common and not-so-common household furnitures. The idea is that if you understand the first part, the do's and don't's of joints and grains, then you can use these diagrams as guides to build your own versions. The diagrams are hand drawn and clear, and only my own ability and tools lies between me and making these items. Note this is not a step-by-step guide to making the furnitures.

There's nothing fancy about this book to be honest. And honest would be a great way to describe this guide because it is essentially a book that ensures making straight forward cabinet and furniture basics are covered. It has a slightly old fashioned feel to it with line drawn illustrations instead of computer generated stuff. I rather like that. It's quite a big book that covers a lot of ground as well and would be ideal for a novice. If you are well versed in furniture making then most of this book would be already known so probably not an essential buy. It's American therefore you have to deal with inches and their terminology for some things. I always smile when I read 'rabbet' for 'rebate.' It's not a huge issue as you are really simply getting the basics of construction sorted and the method of measuring is your own choice. And to be fair American woodworking is generally far more popular and of a higher quality than it is in the UK so most books that have any real worth are likely to come from the US. Overall a great book for the new to cabinet making.

Very good illustrations.

First and foremost this is not a step by step guide or a book for beginners, this book is aimed at advanced or experienced joiners cabinet makers or woodworkers. This book is to be used as a reference book for projects, commissions or contracts. It enable you to have an insight of how pieces are built and ways around certain issues that may arise in the construction of pieces of furniture. I found this book immensely useful being a cabinet maker and joiner, at times I need to refresh or simply dicover how certain pieces I am asked to make are actually made since there are so many variants. The exploded views are superb since they give me the insight on certain subassemblies and joints they are suggested or required. I highly recommend this book for any serious craftsman or enthuiast to get this book as a reference

Not quite what I was expecting. There's plenty in here to read, and it's really good at showing you (for example) 20 different types and styles of feet for cupboards, which makes it great if you want to be able to discuss different styles of furniture. Unfortunately, I was wanting something to show me techniques etc. for making my own furniture, and for that I found it slightly less useful. All in all decent though, and tells you plenty of useful stuff about different ways furniture can be put together.

This is without doubt the best book I have on cabinetmaking! It is very thorough in it's explanation of wood movement, joints and sub-assemblies and basically gives you all the information you need to succeed in your projects. There are a variety of different pieces of furniture (each with a couple of variants shown) and they are all explained with the use of exploded diagrams. It is not a step by step guide of what to do for each project and it doesn't have cut lists etc, but that gives you the freedom to create your own designs/sizes/specs etc. There are enough projects in here to keep you going for years and I cannot recommend this book enough.

If you expect to see dozens of detailed and measured drawings in this book you will be disappointed. But then, that is not what it is about. What it does do it offer a wide variety of general layouts of many different types of cabinets, beds, tables etc. My purpose in buying this book was to have an understanding of the types of joint applicable to various furniture. The diagrams are in sufficient detail with detailed exploded views of the components to create my own material take-off lists and construction drawings. A great book that delivers what it says 'on the tin'.