Simple Japanese Furniture: 24 Classic Step-By-Step Projects Paperback – June 14, 2022

Excellent introduction to vernacular Japanese mid-century designs. The step- by-step instructions and illustrations are easy to understand, increasing the likelihood of success in building the projects offered in the book.

Unlike most woodworking books I've read, the drawings are to scale. This means that using a bevel guage (or angle-finder as the book calls it) you can get angles directly from the drawings. That's why there are no angle measures (other than 90 degrees). You can enlarge the drawings to full-scale using your printer or use them as is.

I took on the pinched legged dining table for my second project ever. I was able to complete it and I learned a lot in the process. Great book for beginners and lovers of simple furniture

The book is great quality, as far as it being nicely printed and having a nice aesthetic. The projects are all really nice, minimal, modern designs. The problems the I have with it is that is really lacking in certain details, to make this table that I’ve attached in the photos, I had to make these really difficult miter cuts that it didn’t really explain how to measure and cut, so I kinda just had to do it my own way. Also everything is in metric, there is a conversion chart in the back, but it’s still a pain for me. As much as I want to like this book, it’s just not giving enough instruction on how to fully make the pieces.

Beautiful book with highly detailed steps and length measurements. However by some incredibly massive oversight, no non-90 degree angles are labeled. And there are a LOT of them.I cannot believe this made it to print. I love these designs so much that I am going to redraw them in CAD and reverse engineer the angles or just make up my own... but really? Come on.

Great condition delivered quickly

Short: I would recommend this book for beginner woodworkers (even more advanced ones).This book is an interesting idea in that it's based of a popular Japanese DIY furniture book, published some time after WWII, to help the average person furnish their home with very basic tools and material. Most of the projects in the book can be done using lumber from the big home centers and basic hand tools, screws and nails. Some projects look very unusual (still interesting) and some of the joinery methods are very useful to learn. The book has very clear pictures and plans (actually very meticulously done). The book is well organized based on the type of furniture.

This is a pretty cool book and it includes many different plans and instructions but it does not include any traditional Japanese joinery as I would expect a book titled as such would include. This book instructs the use of screws, brads and corrugated nails. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to build some cool looking furniture using cheap construction grade materials but not for the carpenter looking to up his or her joinery game.