Complete Book of Framing: An Illustrated Guide for Residential Construction

A former US Secretary of War spoke longly once of the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, etc. This book has all knowns and unknowns, and more. I especially like the writer's philosophy of education. He shows us clearly, carefully and with great good humor how to organize and plan and teach and assign and supervise a work crew folowing an architectural plan. For me working alone and until now making it up as I go along based on old memory and mediation technique, this is more than I can now imagine I need to know; but as a teacher it shows me just the best way to teach and to manage my classroom. Read this section as well, especially as he hides a lot of his best secret tips in the boxes here. As a bilingual teacher, I also love his bilingual section of terminology, very complete, with only a very few inventions and one arguable mispelling. The v and the b are pretty much interchangeable in Spanish, and I had always spelled his bisagra with a v (as they say v de vaca instead of de burro) having learned this usage in hardware stores in Nicaragua twenty years ago. Maybe it is a regionalism. It's enough to drive me to my huge Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages , Seone's Neuman and Baretti, which does spell my visagra with a B! Oh well, in Guatemala a quarter century ago I used to see roadside signs in the mountains offering "serbesas vien frias"). In any case, I am glad to know this previously unknown, and with most people actually working in America now talking Spansh this section is very useful, recognizing the reality of our contemporary work crew. What I know of building I learned some thirty five years ago from an old Italian carpenter who had built the city of New York, with work crews using every European language you could find, including axe-wielding Swedes who eschewed the saw for their sharpened axes, boards at a time. I did not acquire that skill from him but others, and so have been behind the times until meeting this book. What we then might have considered overbuilding and especially over-nailing are now code. The great part of this very new book is it presents the latest International building code and practices, and nailing patterns which make up for our modern inferior wood, which my Italian master would have rejected as too wavy, too green, too knotty and especially too light. Toe in nowadays four nails and then a nail zig zagged every two feet. Makes good sense. Get'er done. Really this book contains a wealth of information valuable to any level of user, from the brand new beginner to the journeyman, as advertised. By this book you can train a crew. And it is not written in any kind of useless, cutsey "For the complete idiot" style, but professionally with deep wisdom and knowledge and experience. This man Scot knows what he is talking about, and shares it all, clearly, comprehensively, in a way you can immediately use and with clear illustrations. This man is an excellent teacher. For example from the s