Tricks of the Trade is filled with imaginative solutions that you'll find immediate uses for, and you'll also be stimulated to create original solutions of your own.

Whether you're a serious do-it-yourselfer or a building professional, or even if you just do occasional home projects, the ideas in this book will leave you breathless. You'll find tip after tip you'll have immediate use for. They're from Fine Homebuilding magazine's two most popular features: the Tips & Techniques and Q & A columns that appear in each issue.

Wouldn't you rather clean stain off your hands without using thinners or solvents? Do you know a simple and safe way to set an extension ladder at the correct angle? Do you know how to cut acute angles on a chopsaw? Use a table saw as a disc sander?

Would you benefit from knowing how to set screws easier? Or extract them with less effort? Could your layout and measuring techniques stand improvement? Would you like to know how to build a better and simpler sawhorse? These and many other ideas are reprinted here for the first time.

The imagination of real people facing real building problems is limitless, and you can benefit from the creative ideas that people like you have submitted over the years. These ideas will not only improve your own techniques and skills, but they'll also stimulate you to create original solutions of your own.

From the Introduction
Have you ever faced a seemingly simple problem on a project and not been able to come up with a solution? It's maddening, isn't it? You know there's an answer just beyond your reach. If you could just get your brain cranked up and focused, you'd be sure to get it.

Well, sometimes you do get it - and what a great feeling that is! But sometimes you don't, and you may wind up wasting time and materials in a solution that you later realize made no sense.

For a generation now, Fine Homebuilding magazine readers have had a forum for dealing with such intractable problems. Their solution has been two extraordinarily popular columns that appear in each issue: Tips & Techniques and Q & A.

Tips & Techniques is a monologue; it provides answers only. It is the filtered collection of hard-won tricks developed by experienced professionals and skilled amateurs facing real building problems. Hundreds are submitted to the editors, but only the select few are chosen to be published. And readers are constantly telling us how useful these ideas have been to them.

Q & A is a dialogue. Builders with problems they can't solve write in to the editors, who find pros who have faced and solved the same problem. Sometimes their response elicits other responses, and a fascinating exchange of ideas may ensue.

The net impact of both columns is the same: people sharing problems and solutions in an open forum and helping each other become better craftsmen. This book is a collection of the best ideas from these columns. It focuses on subjects near and dear to the hearts of may do-it-yourselfers and professionals - building jigs, making new use of old parts, finding additional uses for tools, improving tool techniques, and creating devices out of items you thought were junk or just used for something else. It proves something that many of us have suspected for a long time - that the real pleasure is in the process and the discovery as much as in the satisfaction of completing a job well done.

Table of Contents
Introduction. Chapter 1: Jigs, Vises and Clamps. Chapter 2: Hand Tools. Chapter 3: Power Tools. Chapter 4: Saws. Chapter 5: Nails and Screws. Chapter 6: Bits. Chapter 7: Sawhorses and Benches. Chapter 8: Layout and Measuring. Chapter 9: Boxes, Belts, Bats, Buckets and Storage. Chapter 10: Trucks and Vans. Chapter 11: Health, Safety, Comfort and Cleanliness. Chapter 12: Some Surprising Ideas. Chapter 13: Questions and Answers from Builders. Index.