Not as informative as I had hoped.

If you're looking for a "how-to" book on woodworking and joinery in particular, this is not the book for you. This is the book for someone that already has the woodworking bug, probably someone who is using hand tools, and who is curious about the development of woodworking tools over the last 300 years. Moxon's treatise was "the first English-language text on the topic" and covers most of the basic tools and some of the techniques.

Chris Schwartz follows up each section with a re-statement in more modern terminology and highlights where things have and have not changed in that time. Perhaps the most surprising thing is how little many things have changed. Nearly all of the tools are easily recognizable, their form and function little changed. The quality of materials and methods of manufacture may be different, but even then old advice is still sound, for example judging the quality of a hand saw - it should flex but not bend.

Oddly enough, given the title, Moxon spends rather little time discussion joinery per se. Instead, he covers what were, presumably, the essential tools for taking wood from log to lumber to final product, with a brief description of the function and use of each. In some cases maddeningly brief, such as his description of the hatchet in woodworking which amounts to "Everyone knows everything about this tool already. Moving on." Aside from a story about George Washington and a cherry tree, I am clueless. In these instances Schwartz's brief elaborations are invaluable.

The quality of the reproduced plates sometimes leaves a bit to be desired, with rough lines and labels that are difficult to pick out. Perhaps these are faithful reproductions of the illustrations in the copies of the original still around, but many online images exist that are sharper and easier to follow. Since a "cleaned up" version of the text is provided, touched up and cleaned up illustrations would not have been amiss along side photographs of modern analogs of Moxon's illustrations.

That nit-pick aside, like all of the books from Lost Art, it is excellent quality, heavy paper, solid binding and a nice clean design to the book. It will make a nice edition to the library of any tool-geek. ( )