The Complete Jewelry Making Course: Principles, Practice and Techniques: A Beginner's Course for Aspiring Jewelry Makers

I have taken a beginning level jewelry making course and find Jinks McGrath's book to be a very useful supplement to classwork. It is particularly good on setting up a studio, identifying needed tools and purchasing or ordering materials. The soldering and bezel-making information interested me most and the book is very thorough in that respect. Other areas very well-covered are design and the related topic of measuring to achieve design aspirations. Finally, the work pictured throughout is lovely and inspiring, with nothing tacky or tasteless included. I like this manual very much and feel that it delivers exactly what the title promises.

It seems that all the studios that offer classes are either to far to drive or are very costly, but I love to make jewelry and I'm always thirsty for more knowledge. When I saw this course at Amazon I was so excited because, #1it was 30% off, and 2nd the description sounded like a book I would really enjoy. Now that I have the course book i'm so glad, its written in a style that is easy follow. I am greatly benefitinq from the purchase, and better yet so are my clients.

This book tells you everything you need to know about making jewelry. It absolutely tells you, step by step, how to do a project. It also tells you all tools you will need, explains what they are for and how they are used and it shows pictures of every one of them. I bought this book because I'm going to start making stained glass jewelry but now, I'm going to be doing a whole lot more. This a great book.

This book is NOT a book of patterns and designs. It is purely a book that gives you some instruction and some ideas about almost every technique you could possibly use to make jewelry. It begins with the very basics about tools (bending tools, forming tools, measuring tools, holding tools, etc.), finding inspiration in nature and other methods, about precious metals (different properties of the precious metals) and non-precious metals, techniques such as annealing, piercing, cutting wire, quenching and pickling, soldering, polishing and finishing, and others. Each of these techniques seem rather complex when you are first starting them, so the one or two pages devoted to each is not enough for you to truly learn any of them. This book simply gives you the basic ideas if you think you might be interested. I like the book because you DO get an idea of all the wonderful techniques available to us, and you can get an idea of what they entail and if you might be interested in pursuing them further. There are only 3-5 photos demonstrating how to do the techniques (some as few as three!) which is definitely not enough for you to LEARN to do them.

Incredible book, lots of guidance and comprehensive information. when you are starting out there is a lot of lingo to cover within the industry, and for tools and processes. I cannot recommend this enough - if you are interested in starting out, you are a beginner, buy this before you buy ANY courses and shell out what could be a fortune, it will help lay the foundations for everything your creative mind and your heart can imagine.

Great descriptions and awesome projects, this combined with the complete metalsmith are excellent learning tools.I definitely enjoyed all the projects. As an aspiring jeweler I often look to books like this for tips, inspiration, and ask alternative views and methods to work with metal on a jewelry level. This book provided an excellent source for all of that. I do not recommend that you use one text or the other for learning metallurgy but this one is definitely worth a look.Definitely consider checking out from the

I gave this book three stars for one reason. It has good pictures. It is not, however, in depth, or in anyway "complete" with regards to step by step instructions for each technique discussed. It is more a severely abridged version of how-to instructions. I am currently taking a jewelry-making/metal-working class and I bought this book and The Work Bench Guide to Jewelry Techniques by Anastasia Young (which is much more thorough) for supplemental reading as I went through the class and half-way through it, I quit reading it and now just look at the pictures for inspiration. It does have good resources cited and the information about types of metal and jewels and how they are graded, measured, and priced is adequate. But if you want a step by step how-to book, this is NOT it. My notes from class are more complete. And frankly, metal is too expensive to be guessing your way through.

If read as suggested, good luck. It reads like a text- book. Which what it is. I think. I like the author very much. He knows what he is writing about. Good suggestions. As a novice I'm not always sure. But then I read it over & take notes or underline. Like school. We all learn from doing so good luck everyone.