The Practical Builder: The Classic 18th-Century Handbook

This 1774 guidebook for English carpenters was one of the earliest "do-it-yourself" manuals ever published. The builders' manuals and pattern books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered carpenters and other construction workers important resources for designs and techniques. Those unable to afford an architect's services could feel confident in the good taste of their residence by selecting designs from a pattern book. Employing elementary arithmetic and geometry, the guide's a...