Hello

[JVS]

Thanks for letting me join the forum. I’m a beginner to silversmithing, and have enjoyed reading the posts on this forum, and seeing the vast amount of knowledge and skill here! I retired as a GP at the beginning of this year, and having dabbled in making bead jewellery (using mainly recycled jewellery bought from eBay and broken down into its parts) my aim for my retirement is to learn silversmithing. I can see this learning will be ongoing for the rest of my life! I have done a beginner course, which I loved, have been stocking up my work bench, buying and reading books, and am excited to continue learning and progressing.

[Ruedeleglise]

Welcome. You couldn’t have joined a better collection of people. As you have said, such a broad sweep of knowledge at our fingertips.


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[CJ57]

Hello and welcome. It depends in the way you learn best but there are some great books and videos if that’s the way you learn or some more one to one teaching would be really helpful.

[JVS]

Hello and welcome. It depends in the way you learn best but there are some great books and videos if that’s the way you learn or some more one to one teaching would be really helpful.
I like both! I definitely found the course took the fear out of things like soldering, and was a good way of seeing how a workbench was set up. I’m a big reader of anything and everything, and love ploughing through reference books. Jewellery books much more enjoyable that medical texts! I’ve the following books so far-
Silver Jewellery Making- Machi de Waard and Janet Richardson
Complete Metalsmith (Student edition) - Tim McCreight
Jewellery Making-techniques for metal- Tim McCreight
The Workbench Guide to Jewelry Texhniques- Anastasia Young
Silversmithing for Jewellery Makers - Elizabeth Bone
The encyclopaedia of wire jewellery techniques- Sara Withers
Magical Metal Clay- Sue Heaser
Small-scale Simersmithing- FJ Whitelaw
and a few in the post from eBay…

[CJ57]

It’s good to be able to do both.
Tim McCreight has come up in advice recently. Looking through mine I have the Elizabeth Bone book and Jinks McGrath is another. Haven’t looked at them in a long while but always worth a revisit.
It’s really just finding a project and practice a lot. Learn to use the basic tools especially a saw. Don’t buy endless tools because you’ll probably end up using them once and then they go into the tool graveyard at the back of a drawer.
At least you can do no harm , just to your bank balance and probably melted silver on occasion!

[Dennis]

Well, its your life, and you can get pleasure from reading, but if eventually you want to show something for your efforts, you must get on and start making.
That said if you have pieces to restore, I would suggest you look for Practical Jewellery Repair by James Hickling, and Jewellery Manufacture and Repair by Charles Jarvis. Also The Jewellery Repair Manual by R Allen Hardy.
These are well out of print, but you might find used copies.

Welcome to the forum, Dennis.

[JVS]

Very true! Procrastination is definitely a fault of mine, and reading can distract me from doing. But sometimes the reading inspires the doing…