Wood identification book - "The Woodbook"

Messages
1,405
Location
Villa Park, CA
A while back there was a discussion on SMC about books for wood identification and someone recommended the book, "The Woodbook". I ordered it from Amazon and received it a couple of days ago. It's quite an impressive book. I have "World Woods in Color" and this book is quite a bit more comprehensive - it's almost 800 pages. I don't know how many woods it covers but it's about two pages per wood, so there's probably 350 trees covered. And not too expensive - it was about $26.50 at Amazon - and free shipping.

Just wanted to pass this along. I have no association with the publisher, the author, or Amazon.

Mike
 
Only a question Mike, if I may.

Do they state the names of the woods in different languages? I'm asking because some time ago I purchased "The wood bible" and I was disappointed to find out that the names of the woods were only in english.

I'm still trying to match the names of the woods I know in my own language with the ones I know in english.:eek:
 
Hi Toni,

One of my daughters got me "Wood Identification and Use" for Christmas and it has all of the woods listed alphabetically by their botanical names. You could then see the English equivalent but using the botanical name find the wood in your reference listings also.

Published by the guild of Master Craftsman Publications, ISBN 978-1-86108-436-1, with a price of US$29.95

Web site for them is www.gmcbooks.com
 
Only a question Mike, if I may.

Do they state the names of the woods in different languages? I'm asking because some time ago I purchased "The wood bible" and I was disappointed to find out that the names of the woods were only in english.

I'm still trying to match the names of the woods I know in my own language with the ones I know in english.:eek:
Yes, most (all??) of the text is in English, German, and French (sorry, no Spanish). The common names on each page with the pictures of the wood are in English, German, French and Spanish. The index, however, seems to only have the names in English, German and French. I just checked a couple of the wood names in Spanish and couldn't find them in the index so I assume the index is only in E, G, and F.

The book is actually a reprint of something put together some years ago when Spanish was not as prominent as it is today. I guess that the copyright on the original expired and that's why the book is not more expensive.

If you can isolate the wood to a species, say oak, you can probably find what you want because all the oak is together - but you'd have to go page by page looking at the wood picture pages to find the Spanish name, which would allow you to cross reference it to E, G or F.

Mike
 
Hi Toni,

One of my daughters got me "Wood Identification and Use" for Christmas and it has all of the woods listed alphabetically by their botanical names. You could then see the English equivalent but using the botanical name find the wood in your reference listings also.

Published by the guild of Master Craftsman Publications, ISBN 978-1-86108-436-1, with a price of US$29.95

Web site for them is www.gmcbooks.com
It looks like there's an updated version of that book available, at an even lower price.

Mike

[Oops, that edition is out of stock. The original is here.]
 
I too picked up "The Woodbook"... great addition to my collection of books about wood and wood ID. They all have pros and cons depending on what you want the book to do for you. If you really just want to be able to ID a board in your shop or a found stack of lumber somewhere, the "Bible" as far as I am concerned is Identifying Wood, by Bruce Haodly.

http://www.amazon.com/Identifying-Wood-Accurate-Results-Simple/dp/0942391047

This one takes you through a step my step process using a hand lense. I've used it for years, and even got the newer revised edition even though I had the original, because I liked the book so much. He also wrote Understanding Wood, another great book that goes into the mechanics of wood, woodworking etc, among other things. Amazon sells both together for $53, a bargain given how much info they contain.
 
Top