Popular Woodworking's Arts & Crafts Furniture: 42 Designs for Every Room in Your Home Paperback – March 12, 2015

I love the project pieces, but be careful with the project plans. I have not built every project, but some that I have completed contain careless errors in the plans.For example: the "All Weather Morris Chair" calls for 1/2 inch dowels in the cut list. Then a few pages later the plan directs you to drill 3/4 inch holes for the dowels into the ends of the "back support" that adjusts the reclining back of the chair. Obviously you need 3/4 inch dowel, not 1/2 inch. The directions also suggest that the dowels be placed in the back support per the back support diagram. There is no diagram provided of the back support.It appears that the diagram, directions, and cut-list were done by different people who didn't confirm with each other as to the correct information.Also, referring to the same project, the cut-list calls for five side slats per chair side. The photo demonstrating assembly clearly shows the chair being assembled with only four side slats per side. Obviously there were changes and adjustments made during the creation of the plan causing some confusion in the final product. They are not necessarily fatal errors, but if you are not careful, you may need to re-build some of the chair parts.If you carefully read through the plans you may catch the discrepancies beforehand. It would have been nice if the Editing team at Popular Woodworking had caught the errors first, and corrected them, before publishing the book.Otherwise not a bad plan book. You'll learn a lot by just jumping in and making the projects. Nothing teaches you more that when you make and correct mistakes... either your own, or the ones made when following sloppily written plans.

Overall this book is pretty good. There is an nice introduction chapter that talks about the history of craftsman furniture, and there are plans for projects of all skill levels. There are also plenty of full-color pictures that show the projects in various stages of completion. For my first project I built the "All Weather Morris Chair", which I thought turned out pretty nice, but there was an error in the plans and cut list. The pictures of the author's chair show there being 4 side slats on each side of the chair, but the cut list and plans call for 5 slats per side, which makes the spacing noticeably smaller than the seat and back slats. I didn't notice this discrepancy until I was doing some final sanding, so it was too late for me to change it. It's not a huge deal since the seat and back will be mostly covered by cushions, but it was enough for me to take a star off the review. Hopefully this will be fixed for the next edition of this book (mine was the 2nd edition).

Great book. My only complaint (and it's a minor one) is that projects later in the book make references to techniques used in earlier projects rather then repeating the info again. This means that you have to flip back and forth a lot. I would prefer that each project have all the information you need in the same chapter.Great pictures and great instructions. My wife enjoys going through this book and picking out the pieces she wants.

Just what I was after, classic furniture designs

If you want to make stylish furniture, this should be in your library

I own the previous edition of this work--the one that comes with a CD-ROM. Using the book preview I compared the Table of Contents of this book and the earlier one to see what's new. This review is for those who are interested in the differences. It's not a review of this edition specifically, because I don't own it. However, I would give the first edition five stars, so I do the same here.On to the differences:The 'bonus CD-ROM' actually just contains a PDF file called 'ArtsAndCraftsBonusDisc.pdf'. It's 52 pages long, and contains 10 additional projects. Of those 10 projects, only 2 of them don't seem to be included in this 2nd edition: the 'Wright Hall Tree' and the 'Limbert Waste Basket'. Hence, there really aren't 17 new projects in this edition, but 9:7. Stickley's #74 Book Rack8. Stickley's #70 Music Cabinet9. Craftsman Bookcase25. Stickley's No. 369 Morris Chair32. Arts & Crafts Buffet33. Greene & Greene Medicine Cabinet40. Voysey Mantel Clock41. Greene & Greene Frame42. Stickley Mantel ClockAt 301 pages, this 2nd edition seems to be about 40 pages longer than the 1st edition at 207 pages plus the 52 pages of the PDF supplement. It appears from the Table of Contents that the new 2nd edition plans get about twice as many pages as the 1st edition plans, which seems to explain the additional pages. What does seem to be missing, at least going by the Table of Contents, is the ten interesting articles that make up the latter half of the bonus PDF:11. 3-D Mortising Upgrade12. Arts & Crafts Finish13. Greene & Greene Drawers14. Mortise & Tenon Basics15. Mortise & Tenon Joinery16. Mortising Manual17. Router Jig18. Practical Mortise and Tenon Joinery19. Recreating Greene & Greene20. Tenoning FixtureThe Arts &Crafts Finish and Greene & Greene articles are great intros to understanding and duplicating the Arts & Craft/Greene & Greene look. It would be a shame if they really are left out of this 2nd edition--perhaps one of the verified purchasers can comment on this.So judging by the Table of Contents and some of the sample pages--which are identical to my 1st edition--there's not much point to buying this edition if you already own the first, unless you have an interest in the 9 new plans. However, I highly recommend either edition if you love the Arts & Crafts furniture style--there are some great plans here.

Very nicely detailed book, a great guide for anyone wanting to make arts and crafts furniture.

Wife got this book from the library and has indexed it in the order of projects she want to me to build from it. Some advanced projects and a great book if you want to build arts and crafts furniture.