Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Jewelry-Making Techniques: A Comprehensive Visual Guide to Traditional and Contemporary Techniques

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Prior to my wife's intention to return to college as a mature student, I purchased several books for her on 'Silversmithing', and it is Jinks McGrath's book that she values most highly. In fact her lecturer reccomended it to all the students on the Jewllery Making & Design course. It is an invaluable guide to the beginner with its easy to follow instructions and information. It is well laid out with precise information and an easy reference source to fall back on. You won't be disappointed.

The author includes a wide variety of jewelry making techniques primarily dealing with metalsmithing. Full color pictures wonderfully illustrate each section. Simple wire projects, such as making jump rings to more advanced techniques such as inlaying are shown and described with enough detail to understand, but not overwhelm the reader. I'd recommend this book for the beginner who wants to learn about jewelry making, or for those who just want to learn more about jewelry making. Also included is a Themes section of artistic jewelry that will inspire you.

I am just beginning in beaded jewelry and purchased this thinking it would help me. It is a wonderful book and great instructions however, it is not for the beader. This book is very comprehensive on many techniquies such as casting, stamping, inlaying, etc. While it was not for me, if you are interested in other types of jewelry making, this book is for you.

I've been setting stones and soldering findings to chains and making bezel settings for a couple of years and want to branch out so I was specifically looking for an introduction to jeweler's techniques such as mokume gane, reticulation, etching, forging, advanced soldering, gem setting (such as bead settings, pave etc...), polishing, fusing, granulation, ingraving, etc... This book looked perfect. It has sections for all that stuff and more. The production values of the book and the quality of illustration photographs are excellent. Sections are organized alphabetically with a an inspirations sections at the back with lots of lovely pics of nicely finished pieces that were made with concepts in the book.

The problem is with the actual content. Each section is just a couple or a few pages long. Concepts are introduced, given just a paragraph or two - and then that's it. Step by step photo illustrated instructions are not referenced in the text per se and almost always lack a picture of the finished piece or effect, leaving you sometimes scratching your head as to what you are supposed to end up with. For example, the section on Mokume Gane gives great step by step instructions and illustrations about how to sandwich, solder, cut and layer - and then dent up to file off and show the layers. But there's no picture of the front of the mokume gane after the filing so you can see what all that work achieved. There's a single picture of a pave setting, but no instructions on how to get there or what a beading tool looks like or how it is used. For gem setting there's a great step by step of making and setting a bezel, but for facet stones there's only a brief step by step on making a basket. There's no specific instruction on how to notch prongs or how to bend them to set - just the phrase "bend prongs over the stone to set". This isn't sufficient to actually help you do it. The section on sawing shows you what a saw looks like and how to saw a right angle, but lacks a table instructing you which saw blade works with which thickness of metal. Every area of this book suffers from too much brevity and a lack of useful details.

I'm not going to say that this book was worthless. The section on bending and the section on catches are great. I learned a few great tips too - like the use of a spitstick to clean up the top of a bezel setting. I benefited from seeing the step by step illustrations of many techniques I didn't know. But I did not get enough information to actually execute any of these unknown techniques. I'd say that this book is a good visual orientation on what these techniques are, what tools are used, and what it looks like doing these techniques. It's too brief, however, to give you enough instruction to really execute the illustrated techniques. This book just isn't enough - it's an illustrated introduction that requires additional more in depth texts to actually help you get that stuff done.

Follow-up (May 2008): Am I just hard to please? Perhaps, but I have subsequently found a similar book of introduction that I do feel gives enough detail to actually do the projects: James Codina's "The Complete Art of Jewelry Making". Although I'll grant the aesthetics of the examples in McGrath are better, as a guide to technique I consider Codina to be superior.

This book is a very useful guide for those who wish to set up at home or in a small retail business since it provides the reader with enough information to confidently tackle all but the most difficult jobs.This book can also help the adventuresome to expand their scope by providing a lot of technical info which allows one to expand one's range of thinking.

With easy understand and step-by-step instruction, this is a great book for a beginner in jewelry design. In this book, it shows most of useful tools and methods in jewelry making with clear images.

Prior to my wife's intention to return to college as a mature student, I purchased several books for her on 'Silversmithing', and it is Jinks McGrath's book that she values most highly. In fact her lecturer reccomended it to all the students on the Jewllery Making & Design course. It is an invaluable guide to the beginner with its easy to follow instructions and information. It is well laid out with precise information and an easy reference source to fall back on. You won't be disappointed.

This book is well written and it's a very picturesque encyclopedia. Not too technical but still very informative with the author's step by step format. Those of you who are pursuing Jewlery as a hobby or a career will want to add this book to your library.

This is a perfect book that combines text and plenty of images to demonstrate both bare bones beginning jewelry making technique as well as more advanced technique (including making some of your own tools!).
I bought a copy of this after taking it out of our local library and I am very pleased with it...Very thorough. Very easy to understand. For those who are really just starting out it's almost like the "idiot's guide" to the Complete Metalsmith...Not that this is dumbed down but there is alot of terminology in Metalsmith that requires one to know the foreign language first...This book assumes almost no knowledge from the reader, but doesn't babytalk or oversimplify either.

Book is full of everything you want to know about jewelry making. This book is about making "real" jewelry not stringing beads. You learn about how fine pieces are made. Good book to see if you are really interested in this craft. Great reference book.