Visual Culture and Craft

Saws, Planes, and Scorps: Exceptional Woodworking Tools and Their Makers

Envisioning a book that told the story about the biographies of woodworking tools, Jan found in David Heim, a former senior editor of Taunton’s Fine Woodworking the perfect author. Published by Princeton Architectural Press in September 2021, Saws, Planes and Scorps was featured in the New York Times 2021 Holiday Gift Guide for must-have gift books, praised by senior staff editor for the Book Review, Lauren Christensen: “Artisans and their admirers will find ample material to savor in David Heim’s Saws, Planes and Scorps, a compendium of hand tools around the world.”

Also in The New York Times’s “5 Design Books That Are Easy on the Eyes,” Christensen highlights that author Heim offers about 80 profiles of workshops around the world. “Their specialties are as niche as spokeshaves (used to shape carriage spokes or smooth arrows) and birdcage awls. Mr. Heim’s interviewees find design inspiration in fighter plane wings and foxes’ tails.” – The New York Times

Princeton Architectural Press, 2021