Product Description

Featuring step-by-step projects Creating Bea utiful Boxes with Inlay Techniques is the definitive guide t hat makes building elegant boxes easy. '

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183612 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Library Journal
Stowe is a woodworker with 20 years' experience and an eye for boxes and box-making. In a well-presented, concise format, he outlines 15 projects, illustrated in full color. The designs are open-ended, allowing the available wood to dictate a given project. Materials and tools lists are included, and line drawings highlight what details the photographs cannot. Most of these projects are geared toward the experienced woodworker, but less-skilled hobbyists and other general "enjoyers of wood" will also find pleasure in these pages. Gentle in tone but strong in presentation, this book is solidly grounded in practice. In the end, the author offers solid advice on woodworking and, by extension, life. Recommended for large crafts and woodworking collections.?Alexander Hartmann, INFOPHILE, Williamsport, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Not a terrible book, but...
I found this book to be nothing more than a collection of 18 plans on how to build specific boxes made by the author. No discussion of technique, as I was hoping for.
I found the instructions difficult to follow, and found myself reading and re-reading paragraphs over and over again trying to decipher what should be a fairly simple technique. He jumbles multiple steps into one sentance and seems to skip steps and go out of order.
The materials lists are almost useless, giving no dimensions.
This book is not for new woodworkers and unless you already have a very good understanding of how to build boxes and do inlay, then I would say don't bother with this one.

Nice boxes but.......
I bought this book sight-unseen hoping it would provide me, a novice woodworker, with plans and ideas for small boxes.

It has some very nice boxes and good ideas, and all the information required to build each box is there (somewhere), but it is the "bare minimum" required to do the job. An experienced woodworker may not have problems, but to a novice like me, the instructions are often unclear and confusing. He also does many things in ways I'd rather not do or seems more difficult (using a table saw to cut finger joints instead of a router table for one example).

It is totally lacking in dimensional and design information There are only a couple of simple illustrations of each box with little more than overall dimensions and many of the details are unclear. More photos of each box showing all its features or an exploded-view drawing would make things a lot easier. As an example, the sculpted pecan box has a secret drawer. There is no drawing showing it although you can see it partially opened in the photo of the box at the start of the chapter. One must figure out what the entire drawer looks like and construct it from rather vague instructions.

Bills of materials are vague and cutting lists are non-existant.
For example, with the CD Cabinet the material list starts with:

Elm 6 b.f (for sides, center divider, bottom and top)

This is only useful in cost estimation as a board foot is any combination of length x width x height that equals 144 cubic inches (eg. 1" x 1" x 144", 1" x 6" x 24".....). The reader has to figure out the size of each piece to be cut and determine rough stock size needed - and without detailed dimension drawings, that can be annoying or even very frustrating.

Definitely not for the beginner or one who needs a good set of drawings to work from - without having studied the insructions for the tea caddy for about a week and creating my own detailed drawings, I would have a pile of scrapped parts (and at the price of wood nowadays, I can't afford many mistakes).

Not as in-depth as I hoped
I bought this book hoping to cull some ideas for an idea I have for a box with inlay. However, this book is just straight ahead projects. The book does cover other things, like hand made dove tail joints, and making wood inlay - but they weren't as in-depth as I was hoping. If you have a shop full of various power tools and chisels and saws, etc - this book is for you. If you're looking for ideas on box designs/construction, and have a limited set of tools - I wouldn't recommend this one.