6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Looking Projects, Better Than on the Cover, October 28, 2008
This review is from: Build Your Own Contemporary Furniture (Popular Woodworking) (Paperback)
The projects on the cover of this book do not look very contemporary to me. I checked this book out of the library and was pleasantly surprised to see much more modern and contemporary projects inside. The projects include cutting list, photographs and illustrations of the steps and written instructions. Are they accurate? I don't know since I have not built anything from the book (and I am a newbie to woodworking), but reading through the instructions and photo captions, I could follow them.
My favorite projects include:
-Nakashima inspired table
-Magic shelf, which is a wall shelf that looks like a rectangular maze
-Modern console, with 3 different pieces and the top shelf section has various sized/shaped open shelves
-Side table, with tall, thin, toothpick shaped legs (quite contemporary looking)
-Modern console dresser
-jewelry armoire
-shoji paper lamp
One section of the book that I found very informative was finishing technique for furniture. In my woodworking class we learned about sanding from coarse grit to finer grit. There was also brief mention of wetsanding in class. This book shows what the wood looks like after lacquers and sanding w/various grit. I am a visual learning so the light bulb went off when I saw these photographs. Excellent job of showing the benefit of sanding and HOW to sand and finish your project. I have not seen this so well explained in other books.
If this book is ever updated or reprinted, I would suggest placing the more modern and contemporary projects on the cover. I almost passed up looking at this book because of the cover.
I would recommend this book and have now ordered it for my woodworking manual collection.
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