Customer Reviews

Authentic Shaker Furniture: 10 Projects You Can Build (Classic American Furniture Series)

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As a rather novice level woodworker, I bought this book primarily because of the subtitle, "10 projects you can build." "No big deal," I thought. A quick trip to the lumber yard and a few casual hours in the shop and I'd be napping in my new rocker. Actually starting on the projects, however, has been like being sucked into an unexpectedly rewarding and demanding contest with large pieces of wood. What the title doesn't mention (and probably wisely so) is that the most desirable pieces in the book require you to make a variety of jigs and tooling - from scratch - in order to decently build the projects. A fair sample of these jigs and tooling (e.g., post bending form, side rung mortise jig, front rung mortise jig, box molds, lid molds, slat bender, etc.) now hang from the rafters of my rather small shop and threaten the safety of my skull on a regular basis. However, I don't think that the process of building these pieces would have been as pleasurable, or even possible, without acquiring the skills learned in the process of building the tooling. Kerry is a great teacher and his style is easy and encouraging. He helps you to believe that you really can build these projects. I now own four or five of his books (if my shop were less "crowded" I'd be sure of the number) and enjoy both the prose and the projects in each. I believe that this guy is top rate and would strongly recommend his work to anyone looking to learn and/or improve on their skills. I hope that you all enjoy his work as much as I do.

The projects in the book are well detailed with both photographs and excellent writing, but there is not much variety in the projects. I found the chairs repetitive (and largely unnecessary, once you built one, the others were modest modifications). It would have been great to see this talented author expand the breadth of Shaker projects.

I own this book and it is really a good one. I like it so much that I signed up for a class at Marc Adams School of Woodworking with Kerry Pierce where we will build the candle stand shown in the book.