The Art and Craft of Wood ─ A Practical Guide to Harvesting, Choosing, Reclaiming, Preparing, Crafting, and Building With Raw Wood

Learn the basics of backyard lumberjacking and woodworking with The Art and Craft of Wood.

Where people live, trees live. We love our trees and all the great benefits they bring to our lives. They provide shade, beautify our neighborhoods, filter our water, and clean our air, but when they die, we often don't know what to do with them. More and more, that is changing as people have begun to take an interest in reclaiming those trees as lumber. Aimed at the woodworking hobbyist or aspiring DIYer, The Art and Craft of Wood introduces readers to the world of backyard lumberjacking and the basics of wood craft.

The Art and Craft of Wood will inspire you to make something of your own through simple, approachable steps that are beautifully photographed and illustrated. As a reader, you will learn how to mill, stack, dry, and flatten your log into useable lumber and create a variety of useful household furnishings.

The authors, who are also the filmmakers behind the documentary Felled, a film about giving new life to urban trees, have lived the process and share what they learned along the way.

David Hildreth is a filmmaker who lives in Tempe, Arizona, with his wife and daughter. After film school David worked on concert films and advertising seen around the world, all the while looking for stories to tell in documentary films of his own. After learning about the fate of many trees that blow down in monsoon storms and the passion with which people are using them for art, he knew he had found the subject for his feature length directorial debut. His passion for woodworking grows with each new person he tells about the growing urban lumber movement.