Introduction to precious metals

By Mark Grimwade

Book Overview

This is the expanded edition of Mark Grimwade's groundbreaking 1985 book. A solid introduction to the use of precious metals for students, professional jewellers and metalworkers. The author presents... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0408014512
• ISBN13: 9780408014519
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Newnes (an imprint of Butterwo
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A useful reference for jewelers

Grimwade presents a wide-ranging and very detailed study of the precious metals: gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. It starts, on the first two-page spread of chapter 1, with the periodic table. That's very nearly a map of the landscape to anyone in the physical sciences, if hard to apply directly at the bench. Given a few basic properties of these metals - plus some others like copper that appear fairly often in alloys - Grimwade discusses the atomic-level phenomena that give these metals their valuable working properties. Up until ch.5, Grimwade continues with the basic science of precious metals, including extraction and refining. Starting with ch.5, the text becomes more applicable to a small jeweler's shop: the behaviors of alloys, freezing of molten metal (the opposite in some ways of freezing water), working and annealing, and joining. Ch14-16 cover techniques with limited use in small shops, including powder metallurgy - a staple in base metal fabrication, but, except for the recent metal clays, nearly unknown among the uses of precious metals. The final chapter, on hallmarking, goes over the British system in greatest detail, but most of that information transfers well to consumer protection laws in most other industrialized countries. I found a few things surprising. For one, Grimwade's discussion of joining deals almost exclusively with hard soldering, with a few mentions of welding. Despite the many uses of cold joining - rivets, for example - Grimwade seems to think they have no place in jewelry manufacture. Another surprise was Grimwade's frequent mention of nickel as a widely used alloying agent, especially in karat gold, but complete omission of nickel's tendency to cause contact dermatitis ("metal allergy") in many wearers, my family included. I found this especially surprising given his attention to health-related issues (e.g., use of cadmium) in so many other areas. Likewise, I was surprised to see occasional mention of lead-tin pewters without mention than most consumer pewter and even low-temperature solder has moved away from lead-based alloys. On the other hand, Grimwade is well aware that, as the price difference between gold and platinum shrink, use of platinum becomes more common. His discussion of platinum-group metals will help this advancing trend. I find one feature of Grimwade's discussion especially helpful: his pervasive awareness that an individual artisan's personal workspace is not equipped the same way as a major industrial installation or analytic lab. Although Grimwade frequently discusses sophisticated techniques involving exotic tools or reagents, he often points out simpler, safer techniques better suited to a small shop. I think he missed one opportunity, though. Metal clay has become widespread in smaller shops, and finely controllable kilns with it. A new edition could stand a little more discussion of things like heat-hardening of precious metals and other procedures that require fine control o