Furniture making books.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Anybody have any recommendations on books for making bedroom furniture like a dresser. I'm looking for something that has everything from carcass construction to web frame how to's. I've never done this before and plan to build a prototype first. But I can't seem to find any books on this. Thanks for any help. Alan in Md.

[Wendell Wilkerson]

Here's three books that cover what your looking for:

1) Chest of Drawers by Bill Hylton, Tauton Press
Don't know much about this book other than its published by Tauton Press who seems to put pretty good books. I also have several other books by Bill Hylton that are very well done. Here's a link to Tauton's page on this book :
http://www.taunton.com/store/pages/070618.asp

2) Rodale's Illustrated Cabinetmaking by Bill Hylton, Rodale Press
I own this book and like it alot. It is not really a how to book though. It is more of what I would call a design guide. Mostly there tons of exploded view drawings of all kinds of furniture and different type of joints. There's a whole chapter on different kinds of chests. There's also all kinds of design advice like how tall certain types of pieces are and things like that.

3) The Complete Illustrated Guide to Furniture & Cabinet Construction by Andy Rae, Tauton Press.
This part of a three book series put out by Tauton. I got the set for Christmas. I have perused through this book but not really read it in any detail. It has lots of color photographs and illustrations and it has sections on case construction, internal case parts, shelves, drawers, and alot more. Here's a link to the complete table of contents :
http://www.taunton.com/store/pages/070534_tcpg.asp

Good Luck,
Wendell

[Jim Becker]

I"ll add Thos Moser's Measured Shop Drawings for American Furniture (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806967927/sawsndust) to your reading list. There are a number of Taunton books that also are quite useful in this respect. Even if a specific project doesn't suit you...the methodology is good to learn from. Designing your own project is the ultimate in satisfaction, too.

[Todd Burch]

Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking; Book 3; Furniture Making ("ok") and Aldren Watson's "Furniture Making - Plain and Simple" is good.

Todd.

[Ted Shrader]

Alan -

Good book recommendations above. One practical recommandation to add - put in dust panels in all the frame mambers. Makes for a "tighter" case.

Ted

[Tom Gattiker]

I have read it. I think it is very niclely done. He walks you through building about 8 chest of drawer projects and has intro fundamentals on chest of drawer anatomy & techniques. A small disclaimer: I have not actually built anything using the book, but I have built projects based on the Beds and Tables books in the series and these have turned out very well.