re: Book Review Mike Pekovich Book

I am copy pasting the rest of my review in comments. 

Hand Skills:

Mike loves doing his joinery by hand but is not opposed to using power tools to help out. He goes over each of what he consider in the “12 Essential Hand Tools”. Of his essentials which I use are squares, chisels, card scrapers, shoulder & block planes.

The sharpening section was one I paid attention to, hating dull tools.

Mike teaches a class on cabinet building each year. In this chapter Mike presents several small wall cabinet builds which have been class projects. One has dimensions and he goes through the build.

A second small cabinet he added Kumiko panels as a design element. The basic dimensions are shown but the essence of this section is the build of a Kumiko panel and how to make the bevel block’s used in the process.

One our forum members, Eric-The Loft; built the bevel blocks / jigs for fabricating his Kumiko panels.

Boxes are often one of the first projects a new wood worker attempts. Their size does not intimidate us and costs are usually low, your scrap pile often has the material to construct them.

Mike shows a sled for building mitered boxes. It has hold downs and flip stops that ride on a T-Track.

His “Quick to Make Box” has the design elements Kumiko panel tops, splined corners and building techniques of sawn off lid and my favorite, masking tape to hold mitered box sides together during glue up.

Other boxes included a Tea Box and one with a single sliding door that exposes walnut drawers on one side, slide it over voila white oak drawers on the other.

He covers the build of a Tea Chest with a sliding door with (of course) a Kumiko panel.

I especially enjoyed two of Mike’s several projects presented in this chapter, a Low Dresser and a Cabinet on Stand.