Customer Reviews

Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The ONE coffin in the book is fancier than a plain pine box, but not by much. The coffin is poorly built, poorly finished and poorly described. The photos don't convey much information and the text isn't much help either. The first rule of writting a "how-to" book is knowing "how-to", very obviously Dale l. Power doesn't. I have seen much better construction in a seventh grade woodshop class.

Everything about the book is unprofessional. If you're an amateur it will not help and if you're a craftsman you'll be appalled.

You could do better with your own imagination. If you need dimensions, call a local Funeral Home, they'll be glad to help.

Amazon should pull this title from their inventory.

This book should be entitled, "Build a coffin at Summer Camp". The quality of the coffin depicted in the illustrations would lead me to believe that the author is not a woodworker and that he is not qualified to write on the subject. The workmanship depicted looks as though a group of school kids put it together. There is nothing in this book that a little imagination and general woodworking knowledge couldn't improve on.

Finally! Something homemade that Grandpa can't complain about. I'm big about giving homemade gifts; be it Christmas, Birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, Ramadan, you name it! But every year, with every gift, always there was Grandpa. "How do you expect me to shave with this razor?! It's made out of rocks!!" or "Why the ---- would anybody want a wooden fireplace!?" But regardless of how mediocre my gifts were, I perservered, each gift usually being more unique and applicable than the last. Well, Grandpa finally died a little ways back, and guess who volunteered to make the coffin? This guy! Despite my incredible natural abilities, I knew I would need some help with this one. There could be up to tens of people, every one elated to judge me by my work. The way I saw it, this coffin was infinitely more important than the death of my grumpy, judgemental Grandfather. That's where this piece of literary genius came into play. Upon first read of "Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself" I knew I was hooked. At first I couldn't tell if it was fiction or nonfiction, a novel or an instruction manual; it was simply too intoxicating for me to decide. I read and reread it four times before falling asleep that night, not because I needed the instruction, but because I just couldn't get enough of it.

Anyway, soon it was time to build. The detailed step-by-step instructions contained within these pages made me confident I could and would make myself proud. I decided on a more complicated coffin, called "the perished protoplasm." I decided to write this on the side of the coffin as well, with the hope that some big words might help make my debut a success. I added a few tweaks, mind you. Including a spoiler on the back to make it sportier, A mouth like you'd see on a WWII fighter plane to make it intimidating (just like old gramps), and even a massive set of horns from an authentic texas longhorn that I mounted on the front. This bad boy was gonna turn some heads.

Needless to say, the funeral was a great success. EVERYONE was talking about my coffin, it was incredible! It was easy to see from the widespread looks of contempt that everyone was super jealous as well. COMPLAIN ABOUT THAT, GRANDPA!! Fortunately I had stopped caring about him years before he died, but with the success of my masterpiece, I completely forgot his existence! I had found a reason to live, and it's all thanks to a man named Dale L. Power and this book. Thank you Dale, you saved my life!

I will have to echo the previous reviews. This book is NOT for a woodworker, even an aspiring one. This looks like a middle-school shop project that would earn a C-. Everything in the ONE casket presented is shoddy. It is nice to see the mistakes, some of which the writer actually makes a point of showing, others I don't even think he realized were mistakes. From the choice of materials (types of wood, glue, "stain", etc) to the actual execution (numerous mistakes and techniques more suited for furniture you'd buy at WalMart than in a piece of quality woodworking) showed that the author did not know what he was doing. I got the feeling that he was learning how to do this through the making of this casket. It showed very clearly that the author is not an experienced builders of coffins/caskets at all (and most likely not really an experienced woodworker at all).
I'm glad I checked this out of the library so I didn't waste money on this title. There are actually better plans online free.