Jonathan Benson is a professional furniture maker who specializes in contemporary curved pieces with extensive veneer figures. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he has won numerous prestigious design awards and is the author of Wood Art Today. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
<br> I’m sure we’ve all looked at the gentle curve of a chair leg or the severe bends of a violin’s sides and wondered how it was done. This book by Jonathan Benson takes the mystery out of wood bending and reveals to the woodworker how it was accomplished. This isn’t a book on furniture making or a collection of projects utilizing formed or bent wood elements. Rather, it focuses primarily on the mechanics of bending wood. Whether it be for the curved leg of a table, the side of a guitar or violin, the spring of a bow, the oval of a Shaker box and more, this book probably describes how it was done. Strictly speaking, it isn’t a project book because, although Benson does include plans for things like a Shaker box and a willow wood chair, other projects focus only on the bent elements of larger items like the sides of a guitar or the legs of a chair. The real strength of this volume lies in its excellent overview of the whole topic of bending and