Thanks to Better World Books, I have in my hands a hard bound copy of the 1988 edition of Robert Wearing's The Essential Woodworker. It's an ex-library copy so it wasn't all the expensive. A bit used around the edges but so am I, so who's to complain?
For the record, I've also ordered a copy of the Lost Arts Press re-issue for a later comparison and, well, I'm a book guy so I buy multiples of books just like people buy multiples of tools. Ok, so I buy multiples of tools sometimes too. So sue me.
Full disclosure: I'm a Tage Frid, William Fairham kind of guy. I prefer my woodworking books direct and without an overabundance of extraneous detail. I wondered if Wearing would go the way of Ian Kirby in detailing how to stand, what time of day to breath in and out, etc. Happily, Wearing does not go that route. He does have the tendency of many 20th Century woodworking authors to overstate in text what he has already illustrated in drawings but I can't fault him for that. It's become an almost common form since the 1950's to provide copious text to explain the mysteries of what has already been illustrated.
Why? Hardly 30 years before that, woodworking books assumed that the worker must have had some familiarity with hand work, with craft, or had somehow assimilated such information by simple proximity through social or geographic means. My guess is that by the dawn of the space age, people were assumed to have forgotten how to think for themselves and the publishers had an Edison Light bulb moment: AHA! Let's spell it out for them! The spell it out books sold to a particular readership and so the publishers figured that everyone wanted the same thing (publishing houses have a tendency to think like that) and so every author was asked to write vampire novels.
This is my Theory Of The Effect Of Vampires On Publishing Trends, or, what I like to call the Sookie Effect. Mind you, I'm a huge Charlaine Harris fan.
Back to Wearing. It'a a really good book. Lots of sensible information on woodwork joints, the use of tools, the construction of cabinets and various pieces of furniture and most importantly, great line illustrations of the various processes. Sometimes authors don't realize that while the illustration is telling a story, their words need to tell their own story in sync and as a companion with the illustrations. I felt at times that Wearing felt the need to be sure his readers understood what he wanted them to learn through the illustrations. As an educator by training, his book shows the style of the British school system in it's request for adherence to a form. There's nothing wrong with that and in fact by doing so, the reader learns considerable about skills and techniques looking to be lost to the power tool world.
I'm putting Wearing on the shelf next to Frid and Fairham. And the rest of The Woodworker Series. Oh, how I wish The Woodworker Magazine has seen fit to publish in the USA!
Till next, Gary
