blacksmithing books

[brucerdn]

Hey there all you Gentlesmiths;
I have been asked to get some more blacksmithing books for the club I belong to. I was wondering what some of your choices would be. The criteria I was given to select books by was anything from beginner level to mastersmith level , as long as they deal with the craft of blacksmithing. thanks in advance for the information and guidance

[ThomasPowers]

so have you checked out the book reviews over at anvilfire.com?

What books do you have already?

Thomas

[bridgtonblacksmith]

Buck,

Of the ones that I have, I'd recommend:

"The Art of Blacksmithing" by Alex Bealer
"A Blacksmithing Primer" by Randy McDaniel
"Professional Smithing" by Donald Streeter

Alex Bealer's book is a great read for the beginners although I find some of his descriptions of processes hard to visualize without a sketch or picture. Still, a good book.

Randy's book is really great as he has many good pictures along with the text AND he teaches several processes by using a nice project to develop your skills on. Also, he has cleverly published the book with a spiral binder so you can take it right out into the shop to refer to as you try his techniques.

Donald Streeter's book is good in the fact that he shows the "old style" of running a shop and gives several examples of projects to build.

I have several other 'smithing books also, but I need more time to read them before I can give a good review.

Hope this helps to begin your search,

[brucerdn]

I have Alex Bealers book and The New Edge of The Anvil and yes I have checked out anvilfires book store. I'm looking for opinions on what has served people best and the ones they don't like as well before I purchase any. Because I know there are good books as well as bad and I really value your opinions, you folks have yet to steer me wrong
again thanks

[irnsrgn]

Plain and Ornamental Blacksmithing by Schwarzkopf is an excellent book and is a bedside reader for Frank Turley I believe. This book was actually written to be used as a classroom book to be used to teach blacksmithing.

And the Cosira books from England are excellent for pictures and text to any basic or intermediate smith and are what I patterned my Blueprints after.
The Blacksmiths Craft
Wrought Ironwork
The Blacksmiths Manual Illustrated

[Nolano]

I have "The Complete Modern Blacksmith", which really is a fantastic book. Oh, and by the way, the Bealer book isnt a very good book. it seems that whenever you get somewhere, something important has been left out, or something like that. I dont really trust it.

[Kristopher Skelton]

Bealer's book is as trustworthy as they come.... He didn't write the book to be an instructional. It was written to preserve information about what was being made by blacksmiths from the middle ages to the early 20th C- covering as many topics as could be covered in as little space as possible. When he wrote it there was no ABANA or other local blacksmithing clubs- for all intents and purposes blacksmithing was dead. So he'd see something that had been forged and guessed at the construction if there wasn't better information available (i.e. there wasn't an "old timer" around to ask how something like that would have been made). He was an historian who, like a lot of folks in the late 60's/early 70's who were throwing off the modernity of mechanization and the birth of a global economy, loved old crafts and the old techniques for making things; he has another book about colonial wood crafting that is similar in approach to "...Blacksmithing". It was in large part because people were able to get their hands on a book like that that they figured they'd give it a try, and that's how we got to where we are. And it's an important work because there is a lot of information there, but it doesn't hold your hand and tell you how to go from raw material to finished product like most other smithing books do; that was never his intention.

IRNSRGN: I found a book called "Plain and Ornamental Forging" by E. Schwartzkopf.... is that the same book?

Complete Modern Blacksmith was written by a gent who needed to make custom chisels for his stone carving. So a lot of his projects are geared toward simple tool making and not "traditional" blacksmithing projects. I really like it though for his "out of the box" thinking and his love of scrounged materials

[T-Gold]

I am personally the most fond of Percy W. Blandford's Practical Blacksmithing and Metalworking -- I have Bealer's book, had "Complete Modern Blacksmith". Really DIDN'T like CMB because it seemed to be lacking in real smithing projects, although the drawings were good. Bealer's is more good for historical stuff than real technique stuff, although I have learned some good things from it and it comes in handy from time to time. Practical Blacksmithing and Metalworking is also pretty cheap...

[one_rod]

A book that I found very interesting is "The Artist Blacksmith" by Peter Parkinson.

It's one of the few books that really goes into the asthetics and design considerations of modern artistic ironwork. Some beautiful photos too.

It's a UK publication, but should be available over there, (I got my copy through Amazon).

one_rod.

[irnsrgn]

kristopher that is the book, sorry I didn't get the title right, its an age thing. LOL