Book of Skills and Tools : A Step-by-Step Guide to Do-It-Yourself Techniques a Homeowner's Encyclopedia of Tools, Hardware and Materials

A comprehensive, easy-to-use, do-it-yourself guide covers everything about tools, hardware, and building materials, from basic skills to advanced techniques, in more than two thousand photographs and step-by-step diagrams. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo.

Though it falls into the how-to-do-it category of books, this volume is equally valuable as a quick-reference source for the identification of common as a well as unusual tools, processes, and finished products. Plumbing and galvanized iron pipe, as well as the entire field of electrical installations, are excluded.

The greatest value of this book is in its abundance of excellent color illustrations, showing every kind of tool likely to be used in woodworking, metalworking, masonry, ceramics and glass, painting and wallcovering, and flooring--these being the six major topics in the book. The first 75 pages are filled with color illustrations of pliers, screwdrivers, vises, planes, trowels, and so on, while the next 35 pages illustrate hardware--nails, bolts, screws, hinges, brackets, etc.

The sections on woodworking and other projects give detailed instructions on the use of tools, with step-by-step illustrations where needed, and also offer hints on, for example, warming glue for use in rabbet joints. They also give practical advice on the use of tools (when using a spokeshave, "press with thumbs, leaving wrists loose").

Librarians who may not be too familiar with the use of a vernier caliper, or who readily admit that they cannot distinguish between a mortise-and-tenon joint and a rabbet-and-dado joint, fear no more. Hand this reference book to a patron and you've got a library friend for life. Every public library should have a copy.