Doormaking and Window-Making

As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner, building doors and windows by hand, one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it. That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets that explained how to build doors and windows by hand, focusing on the basics of construction, from layout to joinery to assembly.

Plenty of books exist on building windows and doors, but most of them assume you have had a seven-year apprenticeship, or the doors and windows they describe are impossibly complex or ornamental. Doormaking and Window-Making starts you off at the beginning, with simple tools and simple assemblies; then it moves you step-by-step into the more complex doors and windows. Every step in the layout and construction process is shown with handmade line drawings and clear text, written with the voice of someone who has clearly done this for a long time.

During the last 100 years, most of these booklets disappeared. Joiner Richard Arnold in England presented Lost Art Press with a copy of each booklet to scan, and they have been combined into a 176-page book with the complete text, cleaned-up illustrations and an essay from Arnold on how these rare bits of workshop history came into his hands.

Hardbound, 4-1/2" wide x 7-1/4" high, casebound and sewn on acid-free paper. Published by Lost Art Press and printed and bound entirely in the United States.