Art of Coppersmithing: A Practical Treatise on Working Sheet Copper into All Forms

As a technical manual for a 21st century student, don't get your hopes up. Where you or I might reach for any of several torches, Fuller relies on coal fires - but I never imagined how many ways you could build a furnace for, or in, or around a workpiece. I admire these guys (yes, all guys) so much more for the blunt instruments they made such fine work with. Forging, moving metal, hasn't changed since metallurgy hasn't changed, and the student looking for technique might find some novel approaches. Well, not 'novel' exactly, but ready for resurgence.The second reader that might benefit is the one working large - like a sculpture I once saw, saw, a deep-relief figure maybe a meter by two or a bit more, raised from heavy-gauge copper. Beautiful, but way beyond the dinner-plate sizes most modern authors address. This book divides work loosely into three scales: kitchen-sized, up to ten liter capacity (very roughly); ten to a hundred, for stills, dyeing, and such; and a thousand liters or more, for big industrial applications. I know I left a gap there - that's where steam locomotive and similar works fit in. My own interests lie in the size range you can hold easily in your hands, so the others interest me only academically.But the third reader - perhaps also one of the other kinds - reads the history of technology. Native copper gave the most primitive metal-workers their start, and metalworkers have advanced every other technology since the start of the Bronze Age. This book reveals some of the trade secrets of the time, and shows how these master artisans developed the craft that enabled industry, transportation, and the advancing days of the Machine Age. The scientists of that era stand out in history; the engineers gave that science a job, but the tradesmen and skilled makers brought the engineering to life. This book gives some idea of how the blue collar men (yes,men) made all of that real.But, books like this assume the reader knows things that have since been forgotten. For example, what is 'Spanish brown'? It seems to patinate and maybe texture the metal, but I have not yet learned the chemical how and why. The amazing mix of knowledge recovered and knowledge lost keeps me coming back to books like these.-- wiredweird

Even as a long time metal fabricator I find little jewels of wisdom in the old school way of doing things. If your into metalwork than this is a good book to learn how they use to do it

As another reviewer has noted, this is not a DIY guide. What it is is a reprint of a late 1800's book on how to make things in copper that were in demand back then. It has a plethora of old ink drawings, including a good number of patterns for things to be made. It also includes arithmatic formulas used for figuring certain proportions, long before the days of pocket calculators or computers.If you've taken just a bit of sheet metal instruction, say in high school, then this book is useful as a guide and enabler to teach yourself more. But if you're just starting out and want, say, a list of cools and a demonstration of basic skills in the order you should learn them, this is not that book (I'm still looking for that book.)I bought this as one of 4 other books on metal working to give me a small library as I start to learn coppersmithing as a hobby. It fills a useful niche in that library and I expect that if I get more into coppersmithing I will go back to this book more and more.

This book was written by a master copper smith. He was apprenticed as a child and grew up with his trade in the traditional manner. He wrote the book so that the art could be available to able people whose families did not give them the opportunity to learn it firsthand.There is a full description of a traditional smithing shop, the tools and processes. He starts with the simplest tasks and takes the reader on a multi-year journey to the most complex ones.The language is sometimes archaic. For instance he uses the word sal ammoniac, which is the 19th century word for ammonium chloride when he discusses fluxes used in copper smithing. So it might be helpful to keep a dictionary on hand while reading.Anyone who is interested in the techniques he describes would also be interested in the books by Oppi Untracht: Jewelry: Concepts And Technology  - This also comes in a Kindle version. I'd recommend ignoring that and getting the hardbound! Kindle is too small to make the photos and diagrams easily readable, I don't care what Amazon says. For $10 more the book is much better! Metal Techniques for Craftsmen: A Basic Manual for Craftsmen on the Methods of Forming and Decorating Metals Traditional Jewelry of India

I bought this book because I have been wanting to work with sheet copper. This book seems to focus on practical uses of copper. Creating and repairing pots, pans, teakettles, ect... This book is not only a lesson on how to work copper but it also emphasizes the role of the apprentice or 'boy' as it is mentioned in the book. I find it important to see that one should not expect to jump right into smithing copper. The 'boys' of that time had to pay their dues and rise up through the ranks in order to gain the trust of the teacher. I did find it difficult to find some of the illustrations. Perhaps when this book was revised they removed some of the drawings. This book is the real deal. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the art and history of metalwork.

I bought this book hoping to find out how the old pot makers would join copper without brazing and this book treats brazing as the common so I didn't find what I was looking for but there is some good info on sheet metal layout and several plans for different items and some on repairs as well, a pretty good treatise on pipe making and joining, some terms I was unfamiliar with but more I think as a function of old english useages rather than current terminology..

This is an great book if you are interested in coppersmithing or metal work. However, if you have little metalworking experience and are wishing to learn how to make nice shapes from flat pieces of copper then this book is not for you. For that I recommend 'Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction: The 14th Century (Medieval & Renaissance)' by Brian R. Price. I've been a sheet metal worker for 20 years and that is the best book I've ever read on metalwork and will teach you all you need to know about forming metal into beautiful shapes by hand right from novice level. The techniques are the same as for copper, and you can learn how to anneal in 5 minutes by searching on youtube.The Art of Coppersmithing: A Practical Treatise on Working Sheet Copper Into All Forms is as it was intended, a useful study aid for a coppersmithing apprentice who is already recieving practical tuition on a daily basis. It has good parts on working out patterns but will not give you enough just from its pages to teach you the skills of how to turn those patterns into the objects pictured. Hollowing and raising is covered but in no great detail.On the whole this is a great book for anyone interested in the history of coppersmithing or for someone who is already fairly competant in the hand forming processes involved in metalwork. It won't be of much use to a beginner. I hope this helped

When l first glanced through the book l thought it was about simple copper working, ha shows how wrong l was.This is a book that covers you from distilling to working on a steam engine. I was amazed at the range that copper smithing covered. You were expected to be skilled with your hands and your brains because there was a huge amount of maths formulae covering simple things like how much cooper was needed to make a sphere to how big a coffee pot would be. I have to say I thought that a coppersmith's work was similar to a silversmiths work just goes to show how wrong l was. This is an amazing book that's well worth looking at because it shows how skilled these men were.