Silversmithing: A basic manual (Little, Brown craft series) (ISBN 0316381519)

A good introduction to working with silver:
This book serves to demystify a craft practiced since antiquity, mostly with low-tech methods such as the ones explained here. The illustrations, both photographic and line-drawing, are lucid and the organization of the book is progressive, a great help for those who have no experience working in this medium. It even includes a chapter on the rudiments of running a cottage-industry silver jewelry business. Though only about 6000 of these were printed, many people working in silver and gold found it extremely helpful as a primer (e.g. Tim Blades, a British metalworker, who writes that "Nick Humez('s)... Silversmithing was my inspiration when I started in the 70s.") Its limitation is that Humez is a fabricator, and although he discusses charcoal casting, he does not go at all into lost-wax investment casting with a centrifuge. There is one error in the first printing that was corrected in the reprint: steel tweezers should NEVER be used in contact with the pickling solution! Also, the addresses for some of the sources of supply may be out of date, but at least the names should provide a basis for a website search. In general, a good job of work, its style a little florid at times but never obscure. This was the last of eight "Basic Manuals" in a crafts series published by Little, Brown in the mid-'70s under the general editorship of Richard McDonough, and benefited from the lessons of its predecessors. A good investment for any aspiring silver- or goldsmith, with a curious chapter on the Humez specialty of silver sculpture. (The author is still very much in business and nowadays has a website -- a technology not available at the time this book was originally published in 1976.)