The Real Wood Bible: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Choosing and Using 100 Decorative Woods

Besides great detailed color pictures of the various woods, it talks about each wood's sustainability, if it's considered an endangered species, strengths and weaknesses in woodworking, where it's grown and how available it might be. It speaks of attributes like if it darkens over time, does it tool burn easily, is the grain tight or strait or difficult to machine, is it a hard softwood or soft hardwood or really hard hardwood etc, if it splits easily and needs to be pre-drilled, many important aspects a woodworker would be interested in. It also gives alternative names which is really helpful. It describes what the wood is commonly used for and why. The beginning of the book explains things like how wood is milled i.e., quarter-sawn, flat-sawn etc. and give a general overview of how wood is surfaced, sized and sold as lumber.

It’s difficult to find such books in France. Thanks to Amazon for helping out

I have other book name WOOD Identification and Use book. I was not sure which one is best so I end up buy both. Both book are very good. I go ahead put both in here for you if you not sure which one book is best for you. Both book are same size but Wood Bible word are big than WOOD book. Wood Bible only have 100 wood list while WOOD have over 200 wood list. Wood Bible show large image of wood than WOOD but WOOD show tree, leaf, nut or fruit while Wood Bible not show it. If your budget are not limit then get both book. If you only can get one... get both anyways... go for cheaper used book. Wood Bible is good book.

Very well produced full of really interesting facts highly recommended

Has to be one the best reference books out there for woodworkers. EXCEPT some minor/major thing (see below).MANY PRO’s: It’s not over the top like scientific botanists book, etc. VERY colorful clear images; greatly helps identify wood types as some species can look very similar) and keeps you interested and drawn in even more.CONs:1) Does not show images of the bark/log form. I feel this is a big loss of leaving this out.2) All the wood type & species pages are organized by ‘scientific name’ big bold letters, with the common name in small unbold letters.This was a huge mistake IMO! It should have been the exact opposite! It makes it difficult and not very efficient when flipping through pages to find wood types and you’re having to pause almost every 2 pages (to look closer ensuring you didn’t skip it m) at the actual name in small letters. A) The majority of us do not know the scientific names, nor really care too much; especially not enough to list it as the primary first word you see.If you want to look up i.e. White Oak you cannot just easily & quickly flip to the common name. Instead you have to look for “Quercus Alba”. Which means your having to us the index A LOT! Which btw throws you on a goose chase (even if it says the word 1 time unrelated to the topic; it will reference you to that page)The scientific name should have just been listed near the bottom of the page for reference info only. The reality is no one ( especially woodworkers) refers to lumber this way nor is going to walk into a wood store asking for them via scientific names.

Great condition and as advertised.

He loves it.

Opened the undamaged package to find a bent up book. Clearly the book was already damaged before it was packaged.