[.ca] The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery (ISBN 1561584010)

Beautiful but inconsistent:
Spectacular production values, but (forgive me) really pretty dis-joint! I'll give one example of what I feel is the book's major shortcoming: in the section on dovetail joints, he never shows a photo or line drawing of a dovetail joint just as it is about to go together - I have to visualize for myself what it is supposed to look like. Its like a friend of mine who when discussing something will think a sentence but not actually say it, and proceed with the discussion as if she HAD said it out loud and assuming you heard it! Very hard to follow sometimes.... In this case a basic beginners step to making dovetails is omitted, so everything that follows is pretty hard to grasp. I also find the pictures and supporting text lacking - they often do not illustrate his point, or are too small / distant to see what is actually going on. I do like the catalog of joints, the discussion of the pros and cons of each and best applications practice. I also like that for each joint he gives several different ways to make it, depending on what tool you have or prefer to use. If Rogowski would just give the book to 5 novice woodworkers and note down everywhere they don't "get" something so he could address their issue in the next edition, he'd do himself and all his readers a big favor.

A beautiful book:
I am a beginning cabinetmaking student at a local community and technical college and was looking for something on joinery to supplement the classroom text. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery by Gary Rogowski is a lovely volume on several of the techniques that have been discussed both in class and in the text. It illustrates them more clearly with photos of the process, than either of the latter sources and helps me understand better what the instructor has in mind when he makes suggestions for my projects. More importantly the book provides more than one way of producing the joints, using different types of equipment to achieve the same results. Since I expect to set up a small shop on a restricted budget, at least to begin with, I know that I will often have to "make do" with the equipment I happen to have on hand, and I think that this book will help me do that. While I am still a little too much of a novice to have yet discovered the faults in the book of which the other reviewers have written, I hope to be able to add my own notes to the methods discussed as I gain more experience, enlarging the information provided with details of my own efforts and those of my classmates (in fact we are expected to keep a journal for class with just this type of data). I also see the book as a list of basic techniques to try before I have graduated.

Helpful Workbench Reference:
As an intermediate woodworker, I often need to review a procedure before undertaking it. I have found Mr. Rogowski's book to be an excellent reference to use at the bench. It explains techniques in two ways, text and visual. You can read about the procedure and clarify particular aspects by studying the clear photographs. I find the combination of text and visual to be the way I learn best. It's almost like watching the instructor demonstrate the technique. The text is concise, yet gets the procedure across. I want to review and then cut lumber as opposed to reading for an extended time. The photographs are well produced and frequently clear up questions I have from the text. The variety of techniques included stimulates me to try other ways of doing the joinery to develop my own variations and adds to my repetoire. Since a single technique may not work out for a particular situation, having a number of ways to do a particular joint comes in handy when solving woodworking dilemas. All in all, I found this to be a very beautiful and helpful book.

Excellent Quality Book:
This book is an excellent quality reference. I was actually suprised because a lot of the stuff you get rated high (4-5 stars) seem to always fall short after the purchase. This is a book that is to be used in the workshop or close by and was made that way....The hard cover, the decent size color step by step pictures, large lettering accompanying pictures, and even down to the table of contents layout makes this a hand down reference for the workbench shelf, as opposed to sitting collecting dust by my War and Peace novel. I really like the fact that the book also went in various ways of performing a particular joint, as it leaves much for the imagination if you need to improvise and improve current project workflow. This is a book that is well thought out and an encyclopedic reference for the above purpose it serves. If your are looking for a book that seems to read like the author just made love to a wood shaving, then there are other classics out there and this definately is not the book. If you want a book that gives you an idea of what your joint options are given tools at hand and how to actually do it, then this is it.

Awesome Detail:
The amount of detail that this book provides is awesome. It is as thick as a textbook, with lots of pictures for those of us who have forgotten most of our college education. But seriously, the amount of detail provided for each method of joinery is unmatched. There isn't another book I would rather have on this subject. I hope the publishers keep adding to this series!