Ralph Flagg Windoes

Ralph Flagg Windoes was an American author and educator whose surviving books center on manual training, mechanical drawing, and practical woodworking. Library and catalog records for his work place him in the early 20th century, and his books show a teacher’s instinct for breaking projects into manageable steps.

He is associated most closely with Cedar Chests, How to Make Them, a shop manual first published in the late 1910s and later enlarged in a second edition. He also wrote Shop Sketching and Architectural Drawing for Secondary Schools, which suggests a career tied to vocational or secondary-school instruction.

Although not much biographical detail was readily confirmed, his published work has endured because of its usefulness. Readers looking for older craft books still turn to Windoes for practical advice, simple explanations, and a snapshot of how woodworking and drawing were taught in American schools and workshops a century ago.