Old & New Tools for Woodworking Research

Here be rabbet holes.

People ask us all the time where we find the historical texts and images that are the backbone of our books and blogs. Like there's a website called secretwood.com (please don't actually click that), which is filled with all the cool old texts. Just pick one of them and be amazed.

The truth is that the way I research old texts isn't much different than when I was in college. It goes like this. Find a book that has a similar topic to what you are researching. Read it. Make note of the books that the author cites, both in the text and the book's bibliography.

Check out those books. Repeat until you hit pay dirt. Woodworking is a small enough topic that you'll find authors tend to use the same sources as other authors. What becomes gold is when you find an outlier – a book that rarely gets cited but seems interesting.

"De l'Exploitation des Bois" by M…