Charles Harold Hayward (1898–1998)

Lost Arts Press again outdoes itself, this time with a 465-page collection of article Charles Hayward wrote for "The Woodworker," a publication based in England. Covering the man's writings from 1936-1966, this 8 1/2" by 11 1/4" tome includes everything from furniture plans and tool identification to Hayward's philosophical views on the issues of the day.
Primarily a cabinet maker, Charles was also the consummate illustrator, his plans and descriptions complete without being overly detailed. (There are some things one has to learn and know based on experience.)
This book is highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn about woodworking, whether they're a beginner or a seasoned vet- or if they just want a rich source of reading material.… (mais)

The "Author" of this amazing 4-volume set is listed as Charles H Hayward. Certainly he wrote a lot of the content and influenced all of it. But the fact is that these volumes contain selected articles (and advertisements) from almost 30 years of The Woodworker magazine while he was the editor, and written by quite a number of people.

The introduction notes that, for home & hobby woodworkers this period covered a transition from hand tools to power tools, the truth is that the articles focus almost exclusively on hand tools. But it is also true that all of those tools are still in use, often for the final clean-up of joinery, adding little details, and so on.

I can't claim to have read all of the articles, and certainly not cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover. But when I'm thinking about how to do a particular thing, or solve a particular problem, or just want to occupy my brain with some carefully curated (twice!) woodworking knowledge, these volumes have been incredible. Routers and band saws and table saws may have made things easier, and altered the process a bit, but miter joints and dovetails and half-laps are still the same. Maybe making 1 or 2 tapers with some hand tools will be simpler than getting a jig set up exactly right even if that could batch out another 50 identical parts (but I don't need them).

But the two most important things I've learned are that there really aren't any "new" problems and that pretty much every problem, every technique, has multiple right solutions. The beauty of having so many years worth of articles grouped together by topic is that you can see several different woodworker & writer's approach to cutting a particular joint or techniques for using & maintaining a tool. And see how many of these are still being repeated today, often touted as The One True Way.

Will these volumes replace a good youtube video that lets you see the whole process, start to finish, with close ups and a couple of different angles? Of course not. But they will explain it very clearly, from experts who had no other good way to share information but with words. And so you get some "why" as well as "how".

And a last word about the volumes themselves. If you've held a Lost Art Press book before you know pretty much exactly what to expect. These are hard bound, with relatively heavy, high-quality paper, crisp printing and illustrations and no dust jackets. The content is all reprint, but it isn't prints of photographs of old pages. Not even the illustrations and ads. All of the text was completely re-set & re-edited. The illustrations were all scanned and meticulously cleaned up. The only exception are the handful of ad pages reproduced from the old magazine where printing errors and blotches and missing bits were retained to keep the feel of the original magazine (and probably to make it even more obvious they are context, not content, and certainly not current ads).… (mais)