World Woods in Color

I found this work particularly useful in designing a woodworking project as a novice who wanted to make something beautiful and lasting. Selecting hardwoods for my project was a major undertaking because of high expectations I have of the woods from which I built my dining table. I wanted beauty, durability, and contrast; at the same time needing compatibility among the five different woods I used. While the book has its critics, as a lay woodworker, it served my purposes admirably. The concise information featured for every wood was extremely useful. If the book sees a new edition, I hope a competent editor will preclude the many minor grammar errors, typos, and several inconsistencies I noted. The text fails to be consistent in always providing data critical to my own project: not all entries provide information about the stability of the wood in service.

The title speaks for itself. The collection of woods displayed in this book are shown with quality and class. The information available on each wood is amazing. The quality of the book itself is of the best I have seen, thick paper, exceptional color photographs and type that is clearly legible. If you are after pictures, information on names, uses, working properties, geographical distribution and much more buy the book, you will not regret it. The time you will save hunting for all this information will recover the price paid.

If you are serious about working with wood, this is the best reference book I've yet encountered. I still run into wood supplier lists that have names not listed by Lincoln, but he catches most of them. Chances are, the dealer used a nickname and Lincoln calls the missing wood by its more proper name. Occasionally, a fairly common name such as Australian lacewood is missing - a sign that a new version should be released. The color photos are fairly close to the real thing.

This book is an easy refernce guide to use, especially from a specie identification standpoint. If you sell wood or wood products, the cross referencing of botanical names with common names is made very easy in this guide, especially because the names are cross refenced with full color photographs! An indespensible tool! Couple that with the immense amount of technical information regarding each individual specie, from steam bending properties to carving and cutting outcomes, and this book would almost become necessary in every wood shop. Use this excellent reference guide with caution around customers and potential recipients of your work, the great, full color photos in this book will make it difficult to settle on the right wood for your project!

I've look at many books on wood but most are very technical and provide more information than is typically needed by the avid woodworker. Each page in this book covers a separate wood, with a very nice 5-1/4" by 3-3/4" color picture followed by commercial name, other names, distribution, general discription, mechanical properties, seasoning, working properties, durability, uses and any important notes. Of particular interest to the average woodworker are the sections on mechanical properties, seasoning and working properties. Here one will learn such things as ease of steam bending, whether it exudes resin, checking and twisting as it seasons, ease of use with power tools such as blunting effects, sanding, and any cautions on nailing, screwing, gluing or finishing. This is my one concise and constantly referenced, single source for all the information I need on the different woods I use or would every use in my shop. Can't recommend it enough.