I have been doing hand tool woodworking for around twelve years. Everything I know I basically learned from Youtube.

I want to get more serious and indepth.

Can you recommend me a book that goes into the construction methods for the different types of furniture and cabinetry a joiner or cabinetmaker would use?

I want hand tool only methods. Dovetails, mortise and tenon, rabbets, dados, grooves, frame and panel, yada yada.

Basically, if I wanted to build all the different types of furniture and/or cabinetry in a home.

Any help is appreciated.

@Handfoolery I recommend Paul Seller's woodworking book "Essential Woodworking Hand Tools" It’s a comprehensive 480-page guide focused on selecting, sharpening, setting up, and using the fundamental hand tools needed for woodworking.

While it's not a furniture book per se, it is a very comprehensive book on using hand tools and joinery. It's definitely worth having for the serious woodworker IMO.

learn how to do joinery, then learn to design/copy and make what you like.

I'm not strictly a hand tool guy, but I can't help but wonder if some of Roy Underhill's books might be useful for what you want. He has several, and some of them describe building some of the stuff we all saw on his TV show. Best part is that most of them are out of print, but used ones are fairly cheap at Amazon. So if they aren't exactly what your looking for, you aren't out much at all.

Graham Blackburn's "Furniture Design and Construction"

Very good book. You can get it on Amazon or through him as well.

-MrRick

Although he's not covering hand tools specifically, and also not including plans, I like this book a lot:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Furniture-18th-Century-Technique/dp/1561581046

As I recall, he has a lot of exploded drawings that show how furniture is traditionally constructed and the text tells you why.

I haven't looked through it in years, but I will pull off the shelf tonight and refresh my memory.

1 hour ago, JWD said:

As I recall, he has a lot of exploded drawings that show how furniture is traditionally constructed and the text tells you why.

I have that book, it's a wonderful study. Since @Handfoolery knows his hand tools and is a veteran with hand tools I think he'd be able to interpolate the drawings into a build.

Get all 6 of Roy Underhills workbooks...usually at your local Library..

1 hour ago, John Morris said:

I have that book, it's a wonderful study. Since @Handfoolery knows his hand tools and is a veteran with hand tools I think he'd be able to interpolate the drawings into a build.

That book looks like exactly what I need and what I'm talking about. So I definitely will look into that one.

10 hours ago, MrRick said:

Graham Blackburn's "Furniture Design and Construction"

I haven't seen that one Rick, that looks like a wonderful book too!

On 5/20/2026 at 4:09 PM, Handfoolery said:

That book looks like exactly what I need and what I'm talking about. So I definitely will look into that one.

I finally got around to revisiting it, I think it is exactly what you want. He does tend to focus on handtools, something I forgot because you really can do traditional builds with a hybrid set up (what I do when I find time to build any more). He also covers styles and evolution more than I remembered, as well as a lot on carving and ornamentation. It really is a great "how to" book for traditional furniture and hand tool construction.

I snapped some pics for you. Sorry about the rotation of the last two, I tried fixing that but the algorithms seem to think they know what's best.

Wow. Thanks I basically just want a lot of construction photos and things like that so that I kind of get an idea about how things go together particularly things I might not have done before. I need to get like a solid grasp of historical construction. I've been flying by the seat of my pants on what I know and what I could learn on YouTube. I need to go a little bit deeper and that book looks perfect to me.

Thanks for the photos.

Glad to help out! I've bought a lot of woodworking books on thriftbooks.com in the last couple years, but I don't remember seeing this one. Might just have missed it because I already had it of course.