Romeyn Beck Hough (1857–1924)

This is an awesome book to look through if you like to look at wood. Originally published in the late 1800's as a 17 volume set (Amazon says 14, but I recall the introduction as saying 17. ) with actual wood pieces in it, this reprint is one fat volume filled with pictures. I forget exactly how many species are shown - about 400, I think - from North America, although there are some imports & naturalized trees, too. (It's not 'woods of the world'.) Each one is shown in beautiful color in 3 different cuts; cross, radial & transverse. From my experience with many of the woods, the colors are true & typical.Each species gets a minimum of 2 pages, facing each other. One side has the pictures of the 3 cuts, the opposing face has a drawing of the leaves, twigs & fruit (usually) & short description. The description could be 3 times as long (which would be helpful) but it is in 3 different languages; English, German & French. The real downside is the drawings & lettering are done in gold against a black background, which I find difficult to see or read sometimes due to glare & older eyes.The other drawback to the book is minor to most people, but can be a problem for the enthusiast - they kept Hough's original classifications of all the woods, which means some species are not correctly named. Sometimes it is necessary to look a wood up by its common name, unless you are conversant enough to know the original classification. I'm not, but haven't had too much trouble looking anything up.All in all, it isn't my best reference, but it is used as one. Mostly I just like to look at the pretty pictures occasionally, though!… (más)

Taschen, publishers of an eclectic collection of art books have reproduced the plates from Romeyn Beck Hough's The American Woods. The original must be a fascinating work, as it contains transverse (cross cut), radial (quarter sawn) and tangential (plain sawn) samples of several hundred different species of wood. The reproduction has excellent quality photos of the three samples faced with a page describing the species, its habitat, and a bit of information about the characteristics of the wood and its uses in english, german, and french.

You can use the book as a reference, but it contains so many species, rather than being limited to those common in woodworking that it is overwhelming from that perspective. And the descriptions of the trees are really too limited to be useful as any kind of identification guide.… (más)