Woodworking in Estonia is a cult classic woodworking book, and it's available now!

Download an excerpt from this book here.

This is the first authorized translation of this classic 1960s text about hand-tool woodworking in this fascinating Northern European country.

From Lost Art Press. Watch this video: HOW A LOST ART PRESS BOOK IS MADE

Manufactured to an amazingly high standard, with sewn signatures and cloth-wrapped hardcovers.

Roy Underhill named it one of his three favorite woodworking books.

But what’s the book about? And why should anyone in the UK care about this ethnographic study?

It’s a fascinating look at hand-tool woodworking during the last 2,000 years.

The tools are similar to what we know, but different in places.

It’s not a “green woodworking” book as such.  Yes, there are times that they use green wood, but there are times they dry it in a variety of ways, steam it, bury it in dung, whatever it takes to get the job done.

They take advantage of natural shapes of branches to make tools and furniture components.

It is, probably, a more balanced view of what woodworking was really like during the last 300 years. The wood isn’t all perfectly seasoned for years, and it’s not all fresh from the tree. It is, instead, all of those things and more.

Also fascinating are the objects made in Estonian workshops: spoons, beer tankards, bent-wood boxes, sifters, rakes, tables, chairs, chests and all manner of household implements.

This book is the first authorized translation, done with the full cooperation the original author, Ants Viires (until his death in 2015) and his family, which will receive royalties from sales of the book.

Absolute classic!