The art and craft of wood : a practical guide to harvesting, choosing, reclaiming, preparing, crafting, and building with raw wood / Silas J. Kyler & David Hildreth.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Art and Craft of Wood shows you how to mill, stack, dry, and flatten a log into useable lumber and build a variety of household furnishings.



Trees are all around us. 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. Now you can learn the skills to reclaim those trees as lumber. Perfect for the woodworking hobbyist, The Art and Craft of Wood introduces readers to the basics of wood craft.



The Art and Craft of Wood will inspire you to make something of your own through simple, step-by-step photos. As a reader, you will learn valuable skills, including:

Where to find wood that you can reclaim for your own use How to mill, stack, dry, and flatten your log into useable lumber Create a variety of useful household furnishings in 7 step-by-step projects ranging in difficulty from novice to more complicated What to do with leftover material, such as making firestarters and animal bedding

Authors Silas Kyler and David Hildreth are also the filmmakers behind the documentary Felled, a film about giving new life to urban trees; they have lived the process of refining wood. The Art and Craft of Wood is their guide to you!

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A fallen tree has more potential than just mulch or landfill. First-time authors Kyler and Hildreth, codirectors of the documentary film Felled, which focuses on salvaging wood from urban trees, here offer a book that represents the process, including finding wood, milling, seasoning, and using the material in a small selection of projects. The designs, however, lack a cutting list or exploded view and steps are not well illustrated. Solid sections include those on moving wood, milling, and seasoning. Frank and Stephen Philbrick's The Backyard Lumberjack has better instructions and techniques illustrated for cutting tools. VERDICT Following the trend of making old crafts artisanal and new, this book is visually lovely but falls a bit short. For advanced woodworkers with a well-equipped workshop. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Silas Kyler is an Arizona native and resides in Tempe, Arizona, with his wife and three young children. Having graduated from Scottsdale Community College with an associate's degree in film production, Silas has always had an interest in telling stories through film and took inspiration from what people were doing with urban lumber for Felled his first feature length documentary. For as long as he can remember, Silas has enjoyed building things with his hands. Woodworking has been a hobby of his throughout his adult life, and his passion for urban lumber was a driving force behind his book The Art and Craft of Wood .

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.