In
1905, Popular Mechanics began its
annual, Shop Notes, and
continued its publication until the 1930s. That Lee Valley, the
Canadian-based woodwork and garden tool distributor, saw fit to reprint
and sell these volumes in their stores and mail order catalogs in the
21st century speaks "volumes" about Shop Notes
persistent usefulness for American "mechanics" and othe craftsman such
as woodworkers. (The advertisement in the image on the left comes from
a 1906 issue of Publishers Weekly. Click here for a Google Books pdf version of a 1921
volume of Shopnotes.)
Woodworker's Manuals:
Click
here for a selected and partially annotated list of woodworker's
manuals published between 1911 and 1920.
One of the most prominent publishers of books on woodworking for that era is Manual Arts Press; click on the link for a copy of the company's 1915 60 page catalog.
For
statistics on number of woodworker's manuals published decade by
decade, see the manuals access page . More and more frequently, copies of woodworker's
manuals are being digitized and uploaded to the Internet by Google
Books.
I
try to keep up with these events, and indicate appropriately the titles
of woodworker's manuals that can be read on the Web, but it is a large
job, so I ask that readers inform me if they encounter web-based
manuals.
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