A solid introduction and more to three classic decorative woodworking techniques.

In these 23 articles from Fine Woodworking magazine, woodworkers get the best technical advice available. From the fundamentals of veneering, including how to saw your own veneer, to inlaying with rare woods and other materials, this collection covers traditional and contemporary methods.

Direct from the pages of Fine Woodworking magazine, you'll find practical advice on buying, drying and storing wood, plus how to work it.

All the common North American cabinet woods, plus a few exotics, are examined, with attention to physical properties, seasonal changes and how they react to machining and finishing.

It takes skill to bring your best design ideas to life. These 31 articles from Fine Woodworking magazine give a wide variety of techniques appropriate for building both modern and traditional furniture. The book also covers how to lay out compound joints, vacuum-veneer, and build with glueless joinery.

Collected from the pages of the most authoritative voice in woodworking, Fine Woodworking magazine, In The Craftsman Style reveals the techniques of more than 20 artisan furniture makers. Attractive, adaptable, built to last, Craftsman furniture is one of the most popular styles today.

You?ll find instructions for over 10 projects here, from bookcases to chairs, complete with detailed illustrations and photographs. In addition you?ll see how this adaptable style -- which includes Mission, Craftsman, Greene and Greene, and Stickley -- can be applied to a variety of furniture.

In the Craftsman Style includes:

• complete instructions for building a wall cabinet, chest, bookcase, sideboard, sofa table, and more
• design inspiration for hall tables, beds, chairs, and a tall-boy chest
• techniques for building a wide range of Craftsman furniture

Shaker furniture is beautiful, yet simple, craftmanship. In the Shaker Style, from the pages of Fine Woodworking magazine, you?ll find the ideas and techniques of more than 15 contemporary artisans and instructions for more than 10 projects, from Shaker chairs to bookcases. Detailed illustrations and photographs accompany each project. In addition, you?ll see how distinctive Shaker details can be adapted for use in today?s furniture.

In The Shaker Style includes:

• complete instructions for building a wall shelf, bathroom vanity, Shaker round stand, Shaker revolver and more
• techniques for incorporating Shaker design details in contemporary furniture
• design inspiration for entertainment centers, cupboards, and corner tables

Good bedroom furniture does more than give us a place to sleep or to provide storage. The best of it has grace and presence, qualities that seem in harmony with its setting. In these 23 articles from the pages of Fine Woodworking magazine, you'll see bedroom furniture in a variety of styles. Pieces range from a graceful Queen Anne lowboy that serves as a dressing table to a spectacular sleigh bed. In between there are bureaus, tables, and a crib. In all, you'll find something here to grace just about any bedroom, whatever style it might be.

Here are ideas to help you build furniture with simple, clean lines, restrained decoration and emphasis on function and durability. These 24 articles from Fine Woodworking provide information for constructing a futon couch, a custom-fitted chair, a pool table, a two-door credenza, a mustic stand, a trestle table, and more.

From the refined beauty of a bowback Windsor chair to the solid utility of a red cedar trestle table, you'll get a range of projects plus dozens of practical techniques to apply to your own designs. And it's all from the pages of Fine Woodworking magazine.

Fine Woodworking's Design Book Seven is a showcase of exceptional woodworking by craftsmen from around the world. Readers get a full-color, visual feast of recent work that includes turning, carving, sculpture, furniture and instrument making.

More than 300 outstanding works from the mid-1990s show a variety of design styles, from traditional to contemporary. Each piece shows how its maker used color and form to bring out the best in wood.

All woodworkers will find design ideas to apply to their own pieces. And everyone who loves well-made, hand-crafted wooden objects, from elegant chairs to delicately crafted musical instruments will find inspiration and enjoyment.

The photographs in this book represent some of the best work from the early 1990s. The book also contains an insightful essay by Scott Landis, "Woodworking Apprenticeship," that explores the medieval path to mastery in the modern world.

• making spline edge joints in boards with the router
• routing mortises and tenons that fit
• routing sliding dovetail mortises and tenons
• a variety of jigs for the router
• cutting to a pattern, tapers, roundovers, under-cuts, decorative covers and routed cavities

Machine tools are fast and efficient, but only if you are skilled at using them. Each machine must be properly tuned and set up -- and that takes time and knowledge. These 26 articles from Fine Woodworking magazine cover tuning up your table saws, adjusting your bandsaw wheels, small thickness planers, workshop noise, and more.

Stationary power tools may be the muscle of the modern shop, but bench and hand tools continue to be its heart and soul. In these 34 articles from Fine Woodworking magazine, woodworkers explain how to choose from a wide variety of wood and metal planes, construct wooden clamps, make classic workbenches, and much more.

• designing for letter carving
• selecting and sharpening carving tools
• carving roman and italic letters
• relief carving
• outlining
• molding (bordering)
• backgrounding
• modeling and contouring
• defining the wings
• carving the convex and concave rays
• finishing the shell

Ingenious Jigs & Shop Accessories presents the work of America's most clever woodworkers. They've found many new ways to guide old tools, and in the process solved a wide range of common shop problems for the rest of us. You'll find almost 40 jigs here and endless ideas for adapting them to your own shop and projects.

Includes articles on:

• Choosing the right materials for making jigs
• Special-purpose workbenches and workbench fixtures
• Router tables and jigs for joinery and shaping
• Table-saw jigs for ripping, crosscutting, joinery, and safety
• Jigs for drill presses, lathes, planers, and chopsaws

A craftsman's solitary victory over a knotty shop problem can make life easier for hundreds of others. This collection of tips from Fine Woodworking's Methods of Work column (issues 49-78) gives you solutions from those who have been there and back. You?ll find tips on hand tools, grinding, gluing and clamping, joinery, lathe jigs and fixtures, power tools, and more.

This volume will enable you to get pro-quality finishes every time. Each type of finish and technique is presented in a clear and accessible way. You'll get complete coverage of smoothing and preparing surfaces, changing the color of wood with dyes, pigments, and stains, polishing finishes to a high gloss, spray finishing, and repairing damaged finishes. Some of the finishes are just about foolproof. All offer professional-looking results.

Includes articles on:

• Surface preparation
• Coloring wood
• Hand finishing
• Spray finishing
• Water-based finishes
• Special techniques

A good finish can make a mediocre job look great; a bad finish will make a perfect piece of woodworking seem lifeless. In these 40 articles from Fine Woodworking magazine, you'll learn about five broad topics: basic finishing techniques, using major categories of finishes, special finishes, new finishing materials and solving finishing problems.

Also see: More Finishes and Finishing Techniques

Varnish, shellac, lacquer, and paint all have their own strengths and their advocates. Of course, the trick is choosing the right finish and applying it correctly to a surface that has been properly prepared. That's what this collection of 30 articles from Fine Woodworking will help you do.

In addition to explaining how different finishes are applied, you'll learn how to remove finishes, how to mix and use stains and other wood colorants, and how to rub out a finish to perfection. In all, the articles will give you the confidence to broaden your finishing repertoire.

Also see: Finishes and Finishing Techniques

In these 36 Fine Woodworking articles, woodworkers reveal the secrets of production turning and share information on decorative folk turning, spindle turning, and sharpening and honing tools. There are also techniques and projects -- everything from traditional nutcrackers to 3-ft.-wide burl platters.

The work is both accessible and diverse. With one lathe, a half-dozen tools, and some lumber you can turn all the parts for a chair or hollow out a bowl.

In Designing with Plants, the experts from Fine Gardening magazine deliver practical advice and innovative ideas for creating gardens that look good year-round. More than 15 talented designers share their secrets for making great plant combinations, extending the season, and using plants in innovative ways. It's all the inspiration you'll need to create a beautiful garden of your own.

Discover how to:

• design gardens for year-round color
• soften paths and walls with creeping plants
• blend flower colors successfully
• create focal points using plants
• mass plantings for bold impact
• design a scented garden

Annuals with Style celebrates the most versatile and colorful flowers in today's garden. Inside, you'll find dozens of exciting design ideas, as well as gardener-friendly advice on creating an inspired home garden of your own.

Michael Ruggiero, an expert in garden design at the New York Botanical Garden, and Tom Christopher, author of The 20-Minute Gardener, have created the only guide to annuals you'll ever need. In addition to design ideas for beds, borders, and containers, Annuals with Style delivers professional growing hints for over 70 essential annuals that will start your garden off in true style.

Hundreds of glorious photographs illustrate the unlimited possibilities of annuals. Whether you're planning an annual display or spicing up a perennial bed, there's inspiration for every gardener in these pages. Discover how these unbeatable plants can turn your garden into the inviting oasis you've always dreamed about.

"...it is sure to end up dog-eared and well-thumbed."

-- Dora Galitzki, gardening columnist, The New York Times

A fresh approach to the art of drying and arranging flowers, Dried Flowers for All Seasons shows how to create dried flower arrangements with the color and appeal of fresh flowers. Most dried flower books take a craft approach to dried flowers that results in arrangements looking pale and lifeless -- dried. Using the Gertleys' time-tested techniques, you can dry flowers that look nearly alive, preserved with the vibrancy and color of flowers just picked from the garden. Especially amazing is the fact that flowers not usually associated with dried arrangements, like spring flowers such as tulips and daffodils, can be dried as successfully as more traditional types for drying and look stunningly alive.

Twenty-four projects showcase a variety of arrangements for each season, from wreaths and garlands to flower pots and Christmas ornaments. An added bonus: a glossary of over 60 flowers particularly suitable for drying. Michael Gertley's vivid color photography and Jan Gertley's warm and elegant illustrations document the step-by-step directions for creating the arrangements.

Definitive, least-toxic pest control answers for home gardeners. Abridged for easy use from the highly successful 736-page encyclopedic reference Common-Sense Pest Control (now out of print), this important resource gives homeowners hundreds of environmentally effective ways to control garden pests.

Here are all the no- to low-toxicity remedies for ridding lawns, gardens and trees of destructive invaders. From microscopic organisms that cause plant-killing blights to burrowing moles and voles that destroy gardens and lawns, you'll find solutions to all your pest problems -- solutions that present the least risk to yourself and your environment. Full-size and comprehensive, with numerous photos, drawings and tables.

How can you rejuvenate plants or safeguard against winter frosts? Or multiply favorite plants to pass to friends? For every plant there is a successful technique -- from root and stem cuttings, to bulbils and spores.

The Complete Book of Plant Propagation shows you the best ways to do these tasks and more. It is the essential guide to improving and enlivening your garden, demystifying the essential art of propagating plants and demonstrating a simple and useful technique that is integral to good gardening practice.

In this book you'll find:

• a unique plant-led approach that leaves you with no doubt as to which technique is best suited to the plant you want to propagate
• color photographs and easy-to-follow, step-by-step drawings of the major techniques
• authoritative advice on over 500 plants as well as full details of every propagation technique
• just how satisfying propagating your own plants can be

Designer Kaffe Fassett has made a tremendous impact on the world of knitting. Through his lectures, exhibitions, television series, and books, Kaffe has brought his colorful ideas to a worldwide audience and inspired knitters everywhere.

Following his highly successful book Glorious Knitting, Kaffe has now teamed up with fellow designer Zo? Hunt to produce a brilliantly colorful knitwear collection to suit all ages. The 33 basic patterns are grouped according to their motifs, which include squares and plaids, circles and dots, flowers and bows, and many more. Almost 80 variations on the basic patterns are illustrated in over 200 photographs. In Family Album, Kaffe and Zo? form a design partnership that revels in the use of color and texture to produce a versatile, inspiring collection of patterns for the whole family.

Little Badger Knitwear is the first book from talented design team Ros Badger and Elaine Scott, who have gathered together a delightful collection of children's sweaters, cardigans, hats, scarves, and knapsacks. Each garment combines the handcrafted detail and practical wearability that give every Little Badger design its charm.

Taking inspiration from such diverse places as 1940s and '50s knitting patterns to starfish found on Cornish beaches, they combine updated traditional knitting techniques with a modern color palette to create children's knitwear. Complete with full instructions and easy-to-follow charts, each finished design is clearly shown in the beautiful color photographs.

Crochet Your Way has it all. If you're a beginner, you will learn the basics of crochet by exploring 20 different pattern stitches and numerous variations. You can put these new-found skills into practice by completing 20 afghan blocks -- each teaching a different stitch -- and finishing them into an afghan. As each stitch and variation is learned, the technique, significance, and uses are discussed and illustrated with clear drawings. If you're a more experienced crocheter, you can follow either the international symbol format or the step-by-step text.

The last section of the book features more than 40 wonderful projects. Each project features both international symbols and written instructions, so you can truly crochet your way!

Crochet Your Way gives you:

• a learn-to-crochet afghan
• over 40 projects for home and family
• easy-to-understand text and symbols
• special instructions for left-handers

Kaffe Fassett, one of the world's foremost decorative artists, brings his dazzling color sensibilities to the art of quilting.

Fassett's new patchwork designs explore the use of prints and color, combining them with the building blocks of circles, squares, diamonds and triangles. The patterns in this book are artfully arranged, incorporating some of Fassett's own stunning fabric designs.

You'll discover over twenty new designs including full-sized quilts, tablecloths, cushion covers, and baby quilts. As always, Fassett's creations illustrate how awe-inspiring the decorative arts can be. There are detailed instructions and simple, colored piecing diagrams for each patchwork with templates for tracing included in the back of the book. And if you are new to patchwork, you'll find the necessary basic start-to-finish directions in a special chapter.

"Why strive for complicated, difficult to sew arrangements when simple, squares, diamonds and triangles are so endlessly fascinating as long as the colors are alive."

-- from Passionate Patchwork