An Old Tools Book List

Welcome! This web page is intended to be a central location for reviews of books of interest to galoots - those woodworkers whose interests are tied to the use and history of old, hand powered tools.

You can find books in one of three ways - by title, by author, or by subject. Just click on the appropriate icon below to get to a web page that will take you to the next step. For example, suppose you wanted to see all the books on finishing. You would click on the subject icon (the picture of the plane), which would take you to the list of subjects. There you would click on the subject for finishing, which would take you to a list of finishing books. You can select each book on the list in turn (or just the ones that interest you) and read its review, using the back button on your browser to return to the list of finishing books.

The subject search described in the previous paragraph is the most complicated procedure, and it's not that bad. The other methods are easier. If you know the title of the book, just click on the title icon below, find the title on the alphabetical list, and click on it to go directly to the review. Finding a review by author is similar.

The ownership rules for this list are quite simple and "inspired" by the GNU Public License, for those of you who know what that is. (If you don't it doesn't matter.) The contents of this list are in the public domain, and any contributions you make will also be in the public domain. Anyone is free to link to this web site, with the only restriction being that no one is allowed to use this information in a work intended for profit. That is, you could not publish it as a book and sell it.

I will act as the initial moderator, and there needs to be one to avoid conflicts. Of course, there are no restrictions on either linking to or mirroring the web site, but the version at the calast.com domain will be the definitive one.

If you own a book that is not on the list and wish to review it or add a review to an existing entry, please send email to me using the address kfg at calast.com (replacing ' at ' with the @ sign) and make sure that someone isn't already working on the same book. (Yes, it's OK to review a book that has already been reviewed, so long as you have something meaningful to say.) I will try to be as open as possible in accepting inputs, as they are most welcome. Reviews may be submitted in plain text, HTML following the existing format, as a Word document, or probably any other format you can think of. I will be happy to produce a web page from text, as it is a simple format, but I reserve the right to correct your spelling and possibly your grammar, although I won't change your ideas.

An Old Tools Book List

Author Index

Title Index

Subject Index